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THE BALANCED LIFE 
BY CLARENCE LATHBURY 



And he . . , had a pair of balajices in his hand. — Rev. vi : 5 




PHILADELPHIA : PUBLISHED BY 

THE NUNC LICET PRESS 
MDCCCCV 



LIBRARY of -^ 


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COPY B. 



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Copyright^ igos 
By The Nunc Licet Press 



PRESS OF WM. F. FELL COMPANY, 
ELECTROTYPERS, PRINTERS, PHILA. 



Contents 



Chapter 

I. The Return to Nature . 

II. Rhythm of the Universe . 

III. In the Stream of Power . 

IV. The White Line of the Dawn 
V. Built Without Hands 

VI. The Highway of the Spirit . 

VII. The Central Melody 

VIII. The Great Amens .... 

IX. Oil in Our Lamps .... 

X. Vision and Patience 

XI. Thoughts That Find Us Young 



Page 

9 
28 
46 
68 
92 
120 

176 

198 
219 

242 



Goodness and love mould the form into their 
own image, and cause the joy and beauty of love 

to SHINE FORTH FROM EVERY PART OF THE FACE. 

Emanuel Swedenborg, 



The lack of equilibrium is the great individual 

SOCIAL EVIL. To seek EQUILIBRIUM WITHOUT AND 

WITHIN SHOULD BE OUR WATCHWORD. — Charles Wagner' 



Everything that man undertakes, whether by 
action, word, or in whatsoever way, ought to 

spring from a UNION OF ALL HIS FACULTIES. — Goethe. 



THE BALANCED LIFE 



Chapter I 

The Return to Nature 

No musician ... 

But be sure he heard, and strove to render 

Feeble echoes of celestial strains. — A. A. Procter. 

For web begun God sends thread. — Old Proverb. 

THE ideal life is a profound harmony Health is 
* . -^ wholeness. 

of all the faculties and organs. 

Every legitimate use and appetite lies easily 

within the compass of that ample and breezy 

word — health. The coming heaven of man 

can not be more than a perfect and joyous 

interplay of his triple nature. Religion may 

no longer be limited to "the life of God 

in the soul of man/' he must also have 

that life in his flesh and intellect; and the 

irrelevancy or disparity of any part is in a 

real sense irreligious because undivine and 

unhuman. Etymologically health is whole- 

9 



The Balanced Life 

ness [holiness], and it is a happy and sugges- 
tive truth that the words are identical in 
meaning. There is a hygienic beauty and 
simphcity which may, without duphcity, be 
called the religious life of man. 
The melody Investip-ation reveals his rhythmical and 

of man. ^ ^ ... 

musical structure even in virgin conditions. 
He is an assemblage of capacities and in- 
tuitions that are actually symphonic, a harp 
of myriad chords keyed to the central 
melody. He is the poetry and architecture 
of Love. The human intent is exquisitely 
poised and proportioned; within it the 
spheres rotate and sing; within it are 
earth and heaven — but hell is not in- 
trinsically there, and when present it is 
as a possession or aberration. Congen- 
itally it shelters all that is beautiful and 
wholesome in the wide domain of Nature 
— that enchanting prelude of which man 
is the song. Its ranked powers are shin- 
ing and all abreast; it has a range of 
affinities that touches the entire universe 
with unutterable adaptation. To say that 

lO 



The Return to Nature 

in its normal condition it stands perfectly 
related to all things is simply saying that 
it is fulfiUing its destiny. 

The return to nature then must solve Wedlock of 

,, . , 1 1 • 1 11 1 1 beauty, repose 

all social and physical problems and make and energy. 
life once more, what it was designed ever 
to be, a unity in variety, like an old air 
concealed in a complexity of variation. 
There will be an excellent blending of 
parts and at the same time an exquisite 
relation to all things that environ it; the 
wedlock of beauty, repose and energy. 
Buonarroti speaks of ^^the expurgation 
of superfluities," Emerson of ''that which 
is simple, which has no superfluous parts, 
which exactly answers its end, which is 
the mean of all extremes — and stands per- 
fectly related to all things." 

Real health means that every faculty Faculties all 

•^ -^ abreast. 

and organ shall keep abreast in the race 
of life, living in absolute fraternity. As 
the literatures of ages are embosomed in 
their alphabets, the teeming gifts and quali- 
fications belong to the simplicity of man. 
II 



The Balanced Life 

And as a rare and dominant literature 
must be built of the widest variation of 
words consonant with its integrity, not 
one deployed or overworked, but invete- 
rately standing where no other would be 
able to do similar service, so there must 
be use and play of the whole scale of life 
without omission or intrusion. The pur- 
port is that life shall become all that it 
may become, that every note shall find 
its full sound and rhythm. Some of our 
friends are like the skies and the waters, 
and we love them with the same happy 
instinct; our whole being turns to them 
magnetically. They have the alluring, 
healing quality of brooks and trees. A 
real life is lyrical, pure and free like the 
bird or the morning light, artless and 
lucid. It is a condition recognized and 
comprehended only by those who in some 
sense possess it. When we meet one who 
is at once simple and beautiful, we realize 
how much duplicity and emptiness there 
are around us. 

12 



The Return to Nature 
The deep-lying instinct bows to the Symmetry is 

1 1 1 -n /- /-« 1 congenital. 

universal order, accepts the will of God. 
Symmetry is congenital, inwrought, and 
belongs to us as veritably as language. 
The highest men and women are direct, 
truthful, and submissive, with all obstruc- 
tion and subterfuge trained away. We 
are ever at our heart of hearts on the 
side of the right; look deep enough and 
every one is delicately strung, with an 
artist's soul for beauty, vibrating to life's 
richest undertones, carrying about an im- 
mense sense of mystery and awe. We are 
satisfied only when our aspirations and 
acts are held true to the perpendicular 
law of our being, are poised to the eternal 
intention for us. In earnest hours we 
are borne on billows of tendency into 
the wideness of life and are surprised 
to find ourselves braver and better than 
we had dreamed. There are times when 
peace is so perfect and sight so clear that 
the faintest shading from the right is de- 
tected. "^ 

13 



The Balanced Life 
The match- \y^ recognize within us a perfect and 

less law. ^ ^ 

matchless law, and are enamoured by it. 
The spirit in its pure actions wears all 
the virtues as fitting garlands. Speak to 
the deeper heart and the angel awakes, 
however profound its slumber. We are 
all better than our theology, carrying in- 
eflPable ideals hidden deep within; the pat- 
tern in the Mount direct from God's hand 
gleams like the fire at the heart of the 
gem. Wonder, innocence, humility, re- 
sponsiveness, are inevitably there and the 
child soul gazes straight past convention- 
ality, is open to the truth and aglow with 
affection. The precious deposit gets cov- 
ered with the detritus of years, but, un- 
destroyed, will, after a while, spring up 
as the winter wheat. 
Health will be Life is really the incarnation of the 

universal. . it* 

human virtues and volitions — love, truth, 
liberty and moral power translated into 
the daily doings, whatever they are. The 
end of life is to realize all that is in it, 
to conform with the ardor of youth to 
14 



The Return to Nature 

the eternal design for us. It is a glad 
cooperation with the immutable order, a 
daily and cheerful demonstration of those 
vital principles which permeate body and 
spirit. Thus we regain that lost bal- 
ance which is the sole avenue to happi- 
ness and strength. Sad it is to behold 
about us many richly equipped persons 
whose acts are entirely at variance with 
their intuitions, their hearts casting back- 
ward glances of sorrow on the past. Or- 
der is our only savior, and like the pic- 
ture in the soul of the artist it lies within 
us waiting to be revealed. Every fibre of 
us leaps with integrity and glows with 
sympathy. Health should and will event- 
ually be universal; man, like the oak, and 
with the same irresistible inspiration, will 
yet fling his form into the heaven and 
root himself in God. His innate capac- 
ities for growth will leave the superfluous 
and eff'ete behind, while that which is pure 
and graceful will be renewed. 
We are insatiable in our cravings ^or^^^^^^^^^ 
15 



The Balanced Life 

completion; we search the wide earth for 
delectation and goodness, and by innum- 
erable ways of pursuit, in defeat preserv- 
ing an inextinguishable belief that there 
is still something to be found that will 
bring sunshine and flowers to existence 
now. Imprisoned voices as of living 
spirits are sighing for home. The dis- 
tinguishing trait of our thinking youth 
today is a longing for the divine; to be 
sure, not in the old ways, but it is the 
same eternal Spirit breathing into new 
vessels. Thirsting for happiness and 
holiness, we will not submit to despair; 
crowded with passionate longings for all 
that is enchanting and shapely, with an 
ear straining after melody, we demand 
something that will unite and clear this 
mystic existence and domesticate us in 
the universe. 
Thirst for Nothing is so athirst for beauty as the 

beauty. . . , 

soul, nor is there anything to which beauty 
will cling so readily. ''Come poetry, na- 
ture, youth and love, knead my life again 
i6 



The Return to Nature 

with your fairy hands, weave around me 
once more your immortal spell!" God of 
joy, lead me through the corridors of joy! 
Is it weakness to be wrought upon by 
sweet music, to feel its wondrous harmonies 
searching the subtlest windings of life, 
binding together our whole being, past and 
present, in one unspeakable vibration ? No, 
it is our strength, for it is the life's response 
to its own measure; the chords are tremb- 
ling to kindred notes, the heart is awaking 
to its intonations, and beauty is answer- 
ing to beauty. Said Jean Paul Richter, 
"Away! away! thou speakest to me of 
things which in all my endless days 
of life I have found not and shall not 
find." Yet his very despair belied his 
fear; he had recognized himself, the 
Creator and the creature were commun- 
ing across the abyss of love. 

The soul finds a charm in pure vibration. Pure 

, , . . , . , . IT vibration. 

and this is why music, the universal dia- 
lect, exercises so strange a power over every 
class of people; it is a pure strain of 
2 17 



The Balanced Life 

nature, and speaks of home as nothing 
else can. We yield it instant attention and 
find in it certain peace and enjoyment. 
It intoxicates the senses, quickens the pulse, 
and awakes the imagination. Life seems 
to go on without effort when we are filled 
with music, and without it we are always 
conscious of carrying a weight. The mel- 
ody of hue and outline, of architecture 
and sculpture and painting, has a similar 
effect upon us; it is music taking form 
and color before the enraptured vision. 
The supreme This is why human affairs find their 

harmony. . . .... ^ . . . 

culmmatmg pomt m justice — for justice is 
the supreme harmony. Justice is rooted 
deep in the being and can not be eradi- 
cated without destroying the life. None 
are too poor to do her homage. The child 
knows when it is treated fairly; the in- 
sane preserve the instinct inviolate — in 
man it is never lost. The universal strug- 
gle is for proportion, though often uncon- 
sciously. The vast social contests now 
at hand are waged that this manifold, 
i8 



The Return to Nature 

incomparable thing we call life may 
find the perfect equipoise. Blessedness 
and power He couched in the sane re- 
lation of each to all, and there is no 
liberty or high use without it. Justice 
means light and peace, inward liberty and 
free command over oneself. Then life is 
mistress of its faculties and establishes 
among its various forms of action unity 
instead of antagonism. It makes free and 
reverential men and women, and, withal, 
beautiful. 

Beauty and justice are inseparable: jus- Beauty and 
tice lies at the heart and beauty is its rai- 
ment. Beauty plays spontaneously about 
the vitalities and is their efflorescence. 
^^The building,^' says Moller, ^^ which is 
fitted to answer perfectly its end will turn 
out beautiful though beauty had not been 
intended." "The superior and appro- 
priate beauty is with the oak which stands 
with its hundred arms against the storms of 
centuries and grows every year like a 
sapHng." It is strong because it is orderly 
19 



The Balanced Life 

and because it is keyed to the unity of the 
earth and the sky. Beauty and justice 
are the only Hberating influences. God 
wills that we should be balanced and free. 
Peace lives only when she is kissed by 
righteousness. 
We know our Therefore we know our future and 

future. 

may to some extent actually live in it. 
That which is to come to us lies within 
us like summer in the bosom of winter. 
As a drop from the sea contains all the 
elements of the great mystery that em- 
braces the globe, so do we hold this mo- 
ment in embryo all that we may ever 
become. The life which is to come will 
^^make one music as before, but vaster.'^ 
It will widen and deepen, but it will not 
change its substance. In the heart of 
the uncouth bit of vegetation we plant 
with hope lie all the loveliness and frag- 
rance of the pansy, the immensity and 
strength of the sequoia, the trailing ele- 
gance of the wistaria. Sun, earth, and air 
are able to allure forth only that which 
20 



The Return to Nature 

was there from the beginning. Its coming 
kingdom leaps from its heart, where it 
lay all beautiful, abiding its advent and 
glorification. Had it a thinking and pro- 
phetic soul it might glance along the future 
and in vision realize its destiny before it 
was accomplished; it might behold its 
compact and sleeping powers take form 
in the summer air of a distant day. 

Will our inner beauty go forth Hke the^^^^^ig^^ 

^ ^ . of thought. 

beauty in the seed ? As certainly as the 
grain will ripen and the grass spring up. 
We may bridge the gulf by the might of 
thought. In the fresh furrow the farmer 
sees the blowing corn or the bending 
wheat; sees ''the near and future blend 
in one." Thought makes the entire career 
realizable now, it can ''run and be glori- 
fied," can transcend time and grasp ex- 
istence in its wholeness. What is germ- 
inant is sure to run its course and the 
matter of time is hardly mentionable. 
We may taste of our being now; faith 
stretches forth her hands and seizes the 

21 



The Balanced Life 

prize before the goal is won. The ar- 
tist's picture glows against the panels of 
his soul with even greater beauty than 
when at last it is spread on canvas; he 
can behold and rejoice in that which will 
take tangible relations in long years to 
come. So Michelangelo lived and thrilled 
in the presence of bare walls that to his 
sure fancy flamed with an immortality 
that the world would not let die. The 
architect builds his creations in the mind, 
treads their halls and naves, and is awed 
by the vast silences that lift themselves 
above his head, before the sound of a 
hammer has fallen on his ears and while 
the material lies fast in forest and quarry. 
Life So a life may be anticipated in all its 

anticipated. . -^ i i r • 

richness, its expanded faculties and en- 
joyments made present. The sweetness 
folded in the soul may chant now its song 
of tomorrow. In swaddling bands it lies, 
sleeping in the bosom of every toiling and 
despairing mortal, waiting to be released. 
We contain this instant in germ all that 

22 



The Return to Nature 

we can be in infinite years and new con- 
ditions. And the best must live from its 
very power of ascendancy; for ^'life is 
ever lord of death/' Said Professor Le- 
Conte, " pure, unmixed evil does not live 
to trouble us long." It expires of its own 
infirmity, for it is a form of death. Evil 
is innately degenerate and faiHng. ^The 
sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
children to the third and fourth genera- 
tion only; but the blessings unto the 
thousandth generation — that is, forever. 

It is life that is pressing up underneath Ascendancy 
the universe with incomprehensible po- 
tency and loveliness; and it is death that 
is dropping away as effete substance. As 
certainly as the orbs will keep their paths 
society will assume in time the image 
of heaven. The Omnipotent can not be 
defeated and the divine in man must 
have free way. Nothing arbitrary, noth- 
ing autocratic, nothing evil, can endure in 
a world where life reigns. Life eludes 
the utmost rigors and establishes itself 
23 



The Balanced Life 

with great sweetness and indifference 
under all varieties of circumstance and in- 
dividuality. It is no exotic, but blooms 
in the m.ost sterile soil and under every 
sky. 
Excellence Why should excellence be the excep- 

exceptional. . , , , i r i 

tion rather than the rule oi human na- 
ture .^ It is rather immature than ''excep- 
tional/' not yet come to its place and 
power. It is a universal fact that things 
begin in the germ and spend a pre- 
liminary period in darkness and pain. 
There is a time of rawness when the 
future viewed from the present appear- 
ance could not be even remotely calcu- 
lated; an uncouth moment of spring 
when hue and shape are absent and the 
verdure is in the pangs of parturition; 
when the creation travaileth. The robin 
has its awkward days when there is no 
beauty in it that could be desired, and the 
coming hghtness of wing, dehcacy of 
plumage, and purity of song seem impos- 
sible and even absurd. The boy has his 
24 



The Return to Nature 

years of "bashfulness and phlegm," is 
lean, lank and uncertain on the very 
threshold of confident manhood. 

The race of man is this moment on the Transition. 
brink of glory, with everything before it. 
Its transition age explains many of its 
problems. Life seems confused and in- 
verted to those who have not grasped the 
idea of development. Like a greater man, 
the race is passing up from youth to 
its mature estate. We are w^arned that 
haste, anxiety, and discord have sup- 
planted the old harmony, the old equilib- 
rium, the old joy and fullness of being; 
that our ideal is no longer a serene beauty 
of spirit. The truth is we were never 
so calm and joyful, never so full of power 
and perfection as at this moment. If 
this is not true, the edifice of divine im- 
manence is shattered; if it be not true, 
the growth of the kingdom predicted by 
our Lord has failed. The shining prin- 
ciple of evolution runs like an unsevered 
thread of light through history, weaving 
25 



The Balanced Life 

and binding the apparent anarchy into 
pattern and plan. Beauty, strength, vir- 
tue and genius are exceptional because 
the race has not yet reached its flower. 
It is in its promise, and its glory is in 
waiting. 
Orchestra But it approaches with the certainty 
of midsummer, and nothing can hinder 
it, much less stop it. Virtue and genius 
are exceptional now, just as they are 
exceptional to the youth. It is proper 
and right that they should be. The world 
is a sapling and not a matured and glori- 
ous giant of the woods. The orchestra is 
just now in the act of tuning up, and dis- 
cordancies are pertinent and timely; soon 
the music will begin. Our loftiest pres- 
ent auguries will by and by be the com- 
mon order and another octave will be 
reached. The exceptional of one era be- 
comes the ordinary of the next; one set 
of ideals realized, another lifts itself on 
the horizon as the sky lifts its canopy 
before the expectant traveler. If God is 
26 



The Return to Nature 

God and man is man this must be so. 
It is a concomitant of progress. The 
difficulty of the pessimist is a difficulty 
of vision; he is in the underbrush at the 
foot of the Mount and is judging the 
ground by the few feet that encircle him. 
He lacks a synthetic and coherent grasp 
of the situation. It is like estimating 
civilization from the viewpoint of the 
Wambutti dwarf who is versed only in 
the kingdoms of darkness and limitation 
and is shut in by dense forests outside 
of which he has never ventured; the king- 
doms and literatures of the world are 
entirely beyond the range of his imagina- 
tion. / Let the pessimist ascend to the top 
of the Mount and one inclusive glance will 
set him right. Then he may travel whither 
he will and his inner eye will give him his 
position, the landscape will repose in his 
soul and key his life to a comprehensive 
faith/ 



27 



chapter II 

Rhythm of the Universe 

Nature is the art of God. — Sir Thomas Browne. 
Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her 
voice is the harmony of the world. — Hooker. 

Nature well nyjAXURE Hes close to the heart of 

and glad. ^Lj 

-L ^ God and sings from sheer neces- 
sity. Inconceivably old, she is clad in 
perennial youth, wreathing her aeons in 
the garlands of the morning and strewing 
roses on her jagged, weather-beaten brows. 
She is full of radiance and peace because 
she is obedient and thrilling with pure 
life. We do not need to be told that the 
universe is well and glad. The sweet air 
rippling in the grass, the clouds drift- 
ing across the sky, the joy of the 
forests and the general jubilee of creation 
assure us. Still the spheres and stars 
sing as of old. John Fiske tells us that 
all motion is and must be rhythmical — 
28 



Rhythm of the Universe 

therefore tuneful. The drop of globes 
through the spaces, the dancing of atoms 
in the dewdrop, the sweep of the blood 
through the arteries, and the unutterably 
swift movement of thought and love all 
follow the line of curves and are melodi- 
ous in their revealings. 

Everything that obeys comes to peace No contest 

1 ' T 1 • ^th destiny 

and joy. In nature there is no contest 
w^ith destiny. Every object falls eter- 
nally into the embrace of a law that is 
love and is saved from disaster by the 
pull of invisible hawsers until it describes 
its circle. Every orb is passing confi- 
dently through a frictionless medium, al- 
ways drawn gently inward until its whole 
course is freighted with harmony. Go 
where you will, the currents of life speed 
onward beneath the canopy of heaven; 
but it is attraction that produces the 
grace and rhythm. The law is that a 
body unattracted by another will take a 
straight hne forever; and it is the influence 
of innumerable orbs one upon the other 
29 



The Balanced Life 

that produces the melody of the stellar 
action. Planets and suns trailing satel- 
lites at their wheels encircle other superior 
orbs in rings of light. The moon girdles 
the globe, the globe with her seven sisters 
the sun, and doubtless all the solar systems 
are rounding a mightier star which in its 
turn attends another — and thus forever. 
Love is life and life is motion, and what 
we have named gravity is but the body 
and form of essential love. God is love 
and it is love that gives rhythm to all 
that is. 
Mathematics Everywhere in the universe there is a 

and music. -^ 

tendency to equihbrium, a passion for 
order and proportion. Order is the wis- 
dom of God expressing itself in grace 
and truth. The creation is balanced 
even to the atom, and its regularity is 
exact — the happy mingling of mathe- 
matics and music. The Infinite holds the 
scales, weighing worlds as though they were 
but grains of dust. When we contemplate 
the inconceivable action of the stars, their 
30 



Rhythm of the Universe 

peace and sanity are astonishing. Cycles 
and epicycles turn one within the other, 
eccentric bodies flashing across the orbit 
lines of conventional systems fret the 
heaven with apparent confusion; yet all is 
as methodic and wholesome as a field of 
rustling corn. Love is at the rudder; the 
eye of Wisdom gazing down the eternal 
way holds the vessel true. Leibnitz 
tells us that ''in producing the universe 
God has chosen the best possible plan, in 
which there is the greatest variety, along 
with the greatest order. The universe is 
an organism in which all the parts are 
mutually adjusted — one of the noblest of 
all philosophical conclusions. The order 
of the whole universe is the most perfect 
that can be." 

Astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology Massive 
— all sciences are essentially rhythmic, music. 
They are massive strains of music. It 
is this that renders them so appealing and 
fascinating to study. Periodicity and 
oscillation are everywhere — rise and fall, 
31 



The Balanced Life 

maxima and minima, pulsation, flow and 
ebb, whether it be the planet spinning 
through the auras, the leaf trembling in 
the air, the blood streaming through the 
arteries, or the atom whirling in the peb- 
ble. Light is the result of motion, and 
the intensity of its brightness is measured 
by the rapidity of its rhythm. 
Curves of the Yht solar system contains myriad curves 

solar system. ^ ^ -^ -^ ^ 

visible only to the eye of mentality. 
Reason must watch their incredible speed 
if they are to be observed at all. Venus 
is traveling fifty times swifter than a rifle 
ball, but she is so distant that to the phy- 
sical vision she seems serene and still. 
We see the motion of a star as we do a 
far-away ship, we feel her movement, while 
she stands majestically against the sky- 
line. The flash of the orbs is like the 
spokes of a turning wheel or a spinning 
top, too rapid to be detected; yet we 
understand the motion. 
Rhythm of For each planet or satellite is the revo- 

the planets, i • r i i i i • • 

iution oi the nodes, a slow alteration m 
32 



Rhythm of the Universe 

the situation of the orbit plane, which, 
after completing itself, starts afresh; that 
vaster gyration which makes the proces- 
sion of the equinoxes; and the sway of 
the world like a top, so that in a certain 
number of millenniums each pole alters its 
position on the orbit Hne. A diagram of 
the earth's orbit will show the poles 
lying on either side of the line. In the 
course of aeons they change places, the 
inner passing to the outer and vice versa. 

Geological rhythms have made the land rhy^hms^.^ 
and sea charmingly diversified in contour. 
Every rock and hill beats with life as 
though it had a soul in its breast. The 
surface of the land is rolling onward in 
alluvial waves three miles in extent. We 
walk upon its solid crests without fear 
or even consciousness of its mobility. 
It is a constant lifting and subsi- 
dence of the crust of the world. Moun- 
tains are pushed higher into the air in 
spite of the everlasting wear of the ele- 
ments. In the flight of the ages sea bot- 
^ 33 



The Balanced Life 

toms have been shifted again and again. 
On the summits of mountains sea-shells 
are strewn, showing that long ago those 
lofty places were the bed of an ocean. 
Along the ranges of hills run the dry 
courses of brooks which sang there when 
those hills were valleys. The level plains 
of the mid-continent were once the scene 
of wonderful dramatics; alternately seas, 
forests, and dense verdure strove for mas- 
tery. The wealth of treasure was in- 
terred there on a scale of grandeur that 
can only be hinted at. Beneath the tide 
of maize and wheat lie the petrified tropic 
flora of an era which created our fuel 
and light. The ocean is forever altering 
its shores, pinking their edges, quarrying 
here and dumping there; yet preserving the 
exquisite balance. The globe is writing its 
history as the tree forms its rings of growth. 
thlTo^dy^ The human body is musical, the 
workers sing at the looms of life. 
Ineffable interchange and fraternity 
hold blest dominion throughout the 
34 



Rhythm of the Universe 

entire organism. The body has its even- 
ing and morning, spring and autumn, ac- 
tion and repose. Ever-recurring hunger 
and satisfaction replenish the waste of 
the toihng hours, the wax and wane of 
the energies. Every cell of the flesh is in 
graceful movement, every organ oscillating 
and swaying with ceaseless melody. Veer- 
ing moods and emotions, never twice 
the same, stir us. The psychology of 
being is intricate and subtile in all its 
modulations. 

The whole body sings in action, and it sings in 
everywhere there is glad reciprocity of 
service. The blood swings in arcs and 
ellipsoids, the lungs rise and fall moved 
by beneficent unseen forces. The wed- 
ding of the blood and the air in the 
heights of the lungs reminds us of 
Maeterlinck's inimitable description of the 
nuptials of the bee high aloft in the pure 
atmosphere of a perfect summer morning. 
Even swallowing is accomplished by waves 
of constriction rippling along the oesoph- 
35 



The Balanced Life 

agus. Digestion is effected by melodious 
undulating movements of the muscles of 
the stomach; and the peristaltic action of 
the intestines is of similar harmony. As- 
similation of food is a measured and 
courtly interchange of the blood and the 
chyle. All motions of the body, when 
natural, are mellifluous; and those which 
are involuntary and beyond the influence 
of artifice perfectly so. 
wakelvdness. The larger alternations of sleep and 
wakefulness are caused by a diminution 
and return of the capacity of the cerebral 
arteries which lessen and replenish the 
circulation of the blood to the brain; a 
most captivating illustration of how modu- 
lation is necessitated by the redistribution 
of the life-forces. And we must not fail to 
note the still wider variations of the several 
stages of existence from birth to age. 
Climatic Climatic rhythms take their rise in 

rnythins. , •' 

mystic and far places. The voyage of the 

earth in its orbit creates the ever-changing 

seasons with their fine shadings of weather. 

36 



Rhythm of the Universe 

An infinitely slow modification of climate 
occurs in the shifting of the poles across 
their orbit lines. The modification is slow, 
but as sure and progressive as time itself. 
If it were but the thousandth part of a de- 
gree in a millennium, the fluctuation would 
be as certain. Rhythms of the atmospheres 
caused by vast streams of cool air pouring 
into heated abysses, where the sun has 
beaten upon the plain and heated the air to 
the rising point, are of constant happening. 
This accounts for the afternoon ocean 
breezes flowing inward toward the sultry 
plain. Rhythms of climate are also set in 
motion by floating icebergs from the north 
seas, and the plunge of glaciers into the 
great deep. A weather map indicates the 
harmonic whirls and arcs of climate. To 
the novice it is a tangle of lines; but the 
aerologist traces there the perfect law. 
To him it is as orderly and sensible as a 
sheet of music. Ever), note of the passing 
year, sombre or bright, makes the varied 
and rich anthem of existence. 
37 



The Balanced Life 

Music The wider rhythms of the whole cre- 
spheres. ation might be called "the music of the 
spheres/' constellation replying to constel- 
lation in antiphonal. The great chords 
quiver beneath the fingers of Deity. In the 
quantity of light and heat the earth receives 
from the sun there is a quadruple rhythm — 
that of day and night; that of the seasons; 
that of the changing position of the earth's 
axis; and that involved by the variation of 
the orbits, eccentricity. These alterna- 
tions are attended by the most delicate 
shadings of weather, evading the expert 
investigator. 
Music of Xhe compound rhythms of the tides 

the sea. . ^ -^ 

mfluenced by the moon revolving about 
the earth; the whirl of the globe on its axis, 
with its incessantly varying position in its 
orbit, complicated by the slight attraction 
of the sun, and the diverse influence of 
each of the seven planets of our solar 
system, with the still more evasive influence 
of every star in space, is a beautiful study. 
The sea is aflFected by each of these in their 
38 



Rhythm of the Universe 

proportion as definitely and actually as by 
the moon itself. The mellow lapping of 
the surf on the beach contains the music 
of millions of orbs. The brook singing 
through the meadow among cowslips and 
nodding dandelions is keyed to a law 
determined by all the galaxies of the sky. 
Then there is the daily rise and fall, the 
fortnightly increase and decrease, of the 
tides, due to alternate solar and lunar at- 
traction, together with the myriad modi- 
fications caused by the influence of all the 
other stars. Billions of spheres, from a 
gigantic sun like Sirius down to an in- 
conceivably minute atom of nitrogen, are 
ceaselessly exerting their forces upon each 
other, and every rhythm, great or small, 
must end in some redistribution of matter 
and motion that takes a form never before 
attained. 

In the interplay of biologic and as-^io^og^c 

, , . . ^ J , rhythms. 

tronomic rhythms animals and plants 

exhibit symptoms that tally with the 

movements of the heavenly bodies. The 

39 



The Balanced Life 

petals of the flowers open and drop ac- 
cording to the position of the sun in its 
course. Plants tuck themselves in their 
wintry beds and await the returning spring. 
Flocks of migratory birds wing their way 
to the southward, where the sun's rays 
are more direct. Certain vertebrates bur- 
row in the soil and sleep until the vernal 
warmth awakens them ; others put on their 
garments of fur or feathers and brave 
the storms. Races, animals, forests, and 
plants — biologic waves sweep across the 
surface of the planet and uncounted 
things are born and expire according 
to the motion of a star millions of miles 
away. 
Spirit the More powerful and indeterminate than 

power ' . r ' ' 

of powers, these must be the action oi spirit upon 
spirit, of mind upon matter. We believe 
that the material world is the bright shadow 
of heaven, the fascinating correspondent 
of the world that lies above it. Mind has 
built and fashioned it, sent it forth and yet 
guides it. This superb civilization, with 
40 



Rhythm of the Universe 

Its marvels of architecture and invention, 
its cities and palaces, its fair fabrics and 
priceless gems, sprang from the soil at 
the nod of the intellect. Everything that 
greets the delighted eye, even the bodies of 
fair women and brave men, once lay hidden 
in the earth. The immortal Spirit brooded 
over midnight and chaos and called forth 
all that is ; spirit is the power of powers, 
and matter is its plaything. It is not con- 
trary to reason that the universe of souls 
above us should inspire and mould the 
temporary generations passing rapidly to 
the same destiny. Behind the curtain of 
years shine the countless spiritual orbs of 
which visible worlds are but the shadows. 
These sway matter as the mind of man 
dominates his brain and hands. The in- 
telligent actions of the stars, their regu- 
larity and their beauty, imply a mind and 
heart actively resi'dent within them. 

Lastly are the variations of all these Variations of 

rj^i , f. . I variations. 

variations. 1 he anthem or creation be- 
comes grander and more complex as it 
41 



The Balanced Life 

proceeds. Rhythm breaks into rhythm 
and harmonies rise to vaster and richer 
ones. Astronomers tell us that nothing 
ever returns to its starting-point, but 
mounts forever in spiral, so that when it 
seems to have arrived at the point of the 
circle v^hence it began its journey, it is 
actually above it in an entirely new region. 
The moon belts the earth, but the earth 
moves onward. The eight planets circle 
the sun; but the sun is traveling to some 
distant goal, is mounting higher and ever 
higher into the spaces. And while all the 
suns, with their attendant worlds, are cir- 
cumscribing some vaster orb, that orb must 
also have its superior, and so on forever 
and forever. Is the throne of God the 
central luminary and power of all I All 
worlds are passing into fresher fields with 
incredible velocity crowned with the peace 
and gladness of perfect obedience. 
Gradations Lonp; ago Leibnitz sawthe beautiful p-rad- 

of Leibnitz. . . . 

ations by which the harmony of the universe 
is attained. The evolution is accomplished 

42 



Rhythm of the Universe 

with irresistible certainty and logic. There 
are tenacity, sequence, melody without in- 
terruption and without haste, perfect time 
and measure, as the earths and the heavens 
mount into the hght. While we cannot 
comprehend the details, we may enjoy the 
representation, as the novice is awed and 
inspired by a technical rendering of Han- 
del's " Creation/' We know that all things 
are rising and will eventually find their 
fruition. The change is always from an 
old state to a new one, and onward to a 
newer, but never backward. 

Where is the connection between the Where is 

the con- 
universe and the Eternal Spirit ? I believe nection? 

it is His robe and crown, the utterance of 
His heart, the map of His wisdom, the 
motions of His soul. He smiles and sings 
through its moods and hues. The laughter 
of nature is the reflex of His joy which He 
would share with us. The creation de- 
clares the orderly constitution of the Divine 
Mind; its minute adaptation of parts, its 
fine adjustments, the perfection of its 
43 



The Balanced Life 

equipment, the glory of its form. It is 
inevitably grounded in the Eternal Being. 
There is a sure correspondence between 
the radiance of the stars and divine truth, 
between the beauty of the lily and the 
beauty of holiness. I believe the air, the 
light, and the measureless spaces are 
crowded with inexpressible influences, so 
that we walk in the midst of immortal 
things. An inner and esoteric significance 
lies deep in every object — in the grass, the 
trees, and the sunrise we may find an 
exposition of the universal Heart. 
Apotheosis Stju above all but God, is man, a 

of man. 

smaller universe containing all in paren- 
thetic clasp. I once placed other objects 
of nature above man and felt that they 
were more divine. I know now that man 
is the precious blossom of creation, and 
only God is above him. While I adore 
nature, I adore most nature's central figure 
and master. Nothing is so marvellous, so 
worthy of reverent and glad study, as man. 
Mountains, giants lifting themselves into 
44 



Rhythm of the Universe 

space and time — how indescribably noble! 
Yet within us lies a sublimity not theirs. 
Whatever dignity of contour, ragged gran- 
deur of chasm and cliff, or redolent land- 
scapes, they cannot command a tithe of the 
loveliness of a being fashioned in the like- 
ness of the All-Beautiful. In a second we 
can cast our minds backward to the mo- 
ment when the mountains were not, and 
forward to the hour when they shall have 
passed away. The lowliest mortal, bur- 
dened with griefs and poverty, yet still hop- 
ing, loving, toiling, is greater than these 
peaks. One is a mass of soil, the other 
an inimitable organism that will grow more 
wonderful so long as God shall live. There 
is a quality of spirit purer than the flower, 
more winning than the sky, and he who 
holds steadfastly to his nature will become 
a rampart more firmly founded than the 
everlasting hills. 



45 



chapter III 

In the Stream of Power 

Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious 
to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too 
late which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to 
me which thy seasons bring, O Nature; from thee are all 
things, in thee are all things, and to thee all things re- 
turn. — Marcus Aurelius. 

Dearness T T 7E are intimately related to the things 
world. V V about us. In a very real sense 
they are a part of us, for we breathe and 
assimilate them. They are as much a 
part of us as our physical bodies, and are 
in fact but an infinite extension of our- 
selves. We can more readily dispense 
with eyes, hands, and feet than air and the 
light of rising suns. Our whole being 
mingles and communes with that which 
lies not only near us, but on the far fron- 
tiers of creation. No more vitally con- 
nected are the lungs and the air than every 
atom of us with the outlying regions whose 
46 



In the Stream of Power 

tides lap the throne of God. There 
is contact as warm and actual with far as 
with near objects and influences. This 
maternal dearness of the world is com- 
prehensible when we realize that the very 
poise of the figure depends upon the fine co- 
operation of the centrifugal and centripetal 
motions of the planet, while its balance 
waits upon the integrity of every star that 
moves. The throb of constellations is in- 
volved with the beat of the heart, and all 
worlds are keeping vigil in the humblest 
cottage in the land. Every orb is con- 
cerned in the motion of an eyelid or a 
thought that spfings to birth. 

There is an indispensable relation be-^^^^^,, 

^ of God's 

tween the lowliest of us and all worlds and heart. 
heavens. Our beauty and goodness is a 
reflex of God's heart. The smallest act of 
truth, heroism, purity, finds quick sym- 
pathy in nature and intuitive response from 
every blade of grass. We feel the smile 
or frown of the world according to our 
quality of life. One day, and all things 
47 



The Balanced Life 

about us are fraternal and joyous, nodding 
approval and opening beneficent arms of 
embrace; the next, they hide their fair 
faces in grief or shame. The sky with its 
penetrating light, the sea with its invi- 
tations, the spaces deep with unfathomable 
worlds, answer the spirit with its sacred 
intuitions and hopes. 
Secret of Here lies the secret of gladness and 

gladness. ^ , ^ , 

health; to come into native union with the 
things which God has placed about us is 
to live from Him once more. Then the 
morning will breathe a new and sparkling 
energy into the blood and the hungry 
tissues will drink light like the young 
leaves in spring. There is an unconscious 
aspiration for perfect fraternity with the 
world, oneness of the soul with that which 
engirts it. Any severance is a severance 
from life which enters through incalculable 
and myriad avenues. The real life is an 
utter blending of self with nature, yielding 
peace and strength. We should walk as 
gods and goddesses through the halls of a 
48 



In the Stream of Power 

temple built for us. If we will live in the 
simple and noble regions of ourselves, we 
shall return to our rightful estate. 

Health, then, is the perfect relation of '^!^^,P^'"^^'^^ 

^ ^ ^ relation. 

the soul and body to the encircling uni- 
verse. The craving for repose and glad- 
ness is a native hunger for a union pre- 
destined of God, and is as natural and 
legitimate as the wish for bread and water. 
We can never be men and women in the 
divine sense, never wholesome, sane, and 
happy without it, because without it we 
must be incomplete, and to that extent 
life in part unrealized. True religion is 
simply soundness, its clearest definition 
being a divine and vigorous bloom on body 
and spirit. Holiness implies something 
more than ceremonial or conventional vir- 
tue, and to be warped in mind or body is 
to be, to that extent, unholy, and thus far 
excluded from the Kingdom. 

We are men and women in the ratio of T^^ weight 

of nature. 

apt and genuine relatedness to the thmgs 
about us; we are invincible and holy as 
4 49 



The Balanced Life 

we have with us the weight and sanction 
of nature. The perfect whole enfolds us, 
and to find real manhood and woman- 
hood we must touch that whole with utter 
peace. This is a truth too fine for many 
to comprehend; it will seem to multitudes 
like the vaporings of a too light-winged 
fancy; yet it is so radical and inevitable 
that no thinking and investigating person 
can deny it. It is evident that the masses 
are yet playing in the dooryard of time. 
John Brierly says: ''Even the highest 
human thinking has not yet become fully 
acclimated to immensity.^' The average 
person prefers a narrow, chitchat world, 
and fears to let his skiff float outside the 
quiet inlets of the great waters. But we 
will have to learn that we are inextricably 
bound up with everything about us and 
cannot escape the task of investigation. 
We must put to sea whether we will or not, 
and until we greet the wider waters we 
shall feel the gall of limitation; fetters 
will bind and barriers hinder. The secret 
50 



In the Stream of Power 

of happiness is not found in retiring from 
life and sheltering the soul from infinity, 
but in pushing life to its full power, inviting 
it to touch as many points as possible — 
the perfect life touching harmoniously and 
vitally all points. 

All p;reat hearts have a pronounced p^^^* 

^ ^ ^ . . hearts. 

gift of adaptation and versatility, and 
are stepping constantly into new^er fields 
of action and prophecy. The growing 
child does not remain in the cradle, 
he moves outward until he occupies the 
world; and the normally expanding soul 
acquires a versatility and power advanc- 
ing day by day to loftier places of faith, 
knowledge, and deeds. Honor him whose 
ambition is not so much to win laurels in 
the state or army, not so much to be a 
jurist, a magistrate, a poet or commander, 
as to be a master of right living; to fulfil 
himself and round out his personal gifts, 
pressing them to the verge of their promise. 
He is not really great who can play a 
symphony on a single string, who is in- 
51 



The Balanced Life 

ordinately developed in a single particular 
— but he who is most closely and potently 
related to the whole of life, whose triple 
being wears the stamp of symmetry. 
Many are like diamonds finished on a 
single facet, shining from a single window 
of the soul, whose glory is but imperfectly 
revealed. The richly diverse nature cap- 
tivates by its proportion, its " measure of a 
man, that is of an angel.'' Man is man 
according to his apt fitness to his place 
and time, and his beauty is increased 
thereby. 
Rounding ^^ should crave the privilege of round- 
faculties, ing all faculties, of beautifying them daily, 
of letting them run and be glorified, of 
nourishing every budding grace with the 
spirit of the joyous gardener who coaxes 
the plant to put forth its deep-hidden loveli- 
ness. We should be wide-flung to the 
offerings of life from without and from 
within. We should give our lives unity 
and inclusiveness, being certain to bring 
the glory of the unseen within the circle 
52 



In the Stream of Power 

of our hope and faith. There are briUiant* 
people anchored to the sod, whose widest 
ken is bounded by the fragment of earth 
upon which they stand for the moment, 
great hearts wasting their wealth on the froth 
of the world. Let us concede the divinity of 
the flesh as well as the spirit, give it full use 
and pleasure; but also give the immortal 
and deathless part of us as much exercise 
and latitude. The material is basic — let us 
use it as a point upon which to poise our 
feet. Mercury-like, for flight to the alti- 
tudes of truth and love. Then will the 
peace of gladness shine upon our brows. 

We need the keenness of a vision that is Synthetic 

grasp. 

comprehensive, otherwise we must become 
dim and fragmentary in our thinking, and 
consequently in our acting. There is a 
synthetic grasp of life that considers wholes, 
taking in its sweep the past, the present, 
and that which is to come. There is a 
power of marshalling and appointing 
particularities, putting things in their 
proper niches, bringing order out of con- 
53 



The Balanced Life 

fusion and building perfect wholes out of 
fragments. The orator who has this 
faculty, who has by the aid of synthesis 
strung his ideas upon the silver thread of 
unity, can speak to the point and with 
effect. He has the symmetrical percep- 
tion, sees his subject in true proportion 
and perspective, as the artist the picture 
he is about to paint on the canvas, and can 
rear a palace of thought and conduct his 
hearers through its glowing corridors. 
There are men who stand upon heights 
with visions of heights above them, moun- 
tain-climbers who pause upon the summits 
of foothills gazing confidently upward. 
On the Let us ascend to exalted places and the 

summits. . r i • -n i 

entire aspect or thmgs will open and 
clarify. On the summits a great deal is 
seen in a moment and life is viewed 
in miniature, like a full-sailing vessel at 
eventide limned against the disc of the ris- 
ing moon. As we mount to rarer altitudes 
our finer natures open and our surround- 
ings become more spiritual and com- 
54 



In the Stream of Power 

prehensible. They breathe upon us with 
a penetrating power as though they were 
giving us their hearts. To the growing 
and blossoming spirit the world is miracu- 
lously renewing itself, partaking of the 
divine, and all things are alive with thought 
and affection. If each spring does not 
bring us a fresher and deeper message, it 
must be because our inner life has been 
neglected or stupefied by Philistinism and 
greed. 

To be ourselves — to be men — is to re- The lost 

chord. 

cover the lost chord of simplicity and joy. 
To live the artless life, to make our chief 
enjoyment and duty to become what God 
would have us, ingenuously and honestly 
human, is to achieve the highest success. 
/If we hold as dear and original a relation 
to the world as blades of grass, our only 
care will be to fulfil that relation for which 
we were created. A healthy soul and 
body stand united with the just and beau- 
tiful as the primrose with the soil and 
the light. We should not attempt with 
55 



The Balanced Life 

feverish effort to accomplish some remote 
eifect, but rather to stand frankly amid the 
eternal ways waiting for our own to come 
to us. In doing that simple thing we do 
all. Let us unfold our natures, open our 
lives like the flowers under the dawn of 
heaven, and we shall join the general music 
of the world. We should work out our 
personal mission in our own way, adorn 
the years of our pilgrimage with an in- 
dividual expression of truth and love. To 
seek to be another is to miss the raison 
d'etre of living and become an incoherent 
and abnormal nonentity. 
The stream We lament the hostility of circumstances 

of power. Ill- r • i 

and the elusive nature or opportunity; but 
if we are in the stream of power, all oppor- 
tunities and all circumstances are ours. 
/ The fault is never, as we are apt to think, 
with circumstances, but with souls. Cir- 
cumstances are but the shadows of our own 
quality, the inevitable accompaniment of 
character. The master of right living is 
keyed to his surroundings and lives as the 
56 



In the Stream of Power 

rose opens to the sky and air; as though 
sky and air were a part of itself, its interior 
lovehness kissed into self-revelation by the 
brooding world. Study yourself, lay firm 
hold on the deep germs of angelhood, the 
folded blossoms of beauty, and bid them 
come forth! Fling broad the shutters of 
your soul to the glory that irradiates and 
interpenetrates the world, hold yourself 
square to the powers that uphold you and 
nourish you, have sovereignty over your 
spirit, dominion over your instincts and 
emotions! 

We should be nourished upon every ^o"^,^?ti* 

^ * ^ -^ cated in 

event of the day, on every object and in- nature. 
fluence that the Creator has strewn along 
our path. To become domesticated in 
nature and dwell in it as in the bosom of 
the family, as in dear intimacies of glad- 
ness and peace, is to claim life's promise. 
Let us be alert to the innumerable in- 
fluences of earth and heaven, hastening 
with pleasure to meet the processional 
as it comes garlanded and smiHng to 
57 



The Balanced Life 

meet us. Let us cast ourselves trustingly 
in the mid-stream of power that bears all 
onward, struggling or quiescent in its full 
tide, floating in the very center of the flood, 
reclining on its swift bosom as it makes for 
the great sea. Let us submit ourselves to 
God and the conquering right — to truth, 
to love, to beauty and power. Then the 
kingdom announced from the beginning 
of the world will organize itself with the 
ease and grandeur of the oak. If we 
would share in the kingdom and glory of 
God, it is incumbent upon us to submit 
ourselves with full and free abandon to 
sympathy and unity with the life that is 
throbbing about us. 
Divine Everything has been provided — it is only 

provision. y o i y 

for us to awake and enjoy. Stoop to caress 
the flower that smiles at you in the lane; 
embrace with divinest tenderness the de- 
praved bit of humanity that looks up at 
you from life's gutters and alleys. The 
dandelion growing between the cart-ruts 
in the road is as dear to God's heart as the 
58 



In the Stream of Power 

American Beauty blooming in the conser- 
vatory. Enjoy the present hour without 
disquiet and without foreboding, for the 
present is all that is truly yours. The past 
when it was with you was the present, and 
the future when it comes will be the pres- 
ent also. If you forego the moments, you 
forego all. Become a child again in the 
summer day, bathed in the peace and 
ecstasy of perfect trust. Seize again the 
power of enjoying the passing events. To 
enter the Kingdom of Heaven we must 
revert to the estate of the child, rediscover 
its strength and simplicity. 

Take root in the very heart of things and The heart 

•' p oi things. 

draw consolation from sweet and vital re- 
gions, storing up the energies flowing from 
primal sources against approaching strug- 
gles of body and brain, against depress- 
ing visions of suff'ering and sin. Try to 
catch the fullness and purity of the sea, the 
sun, the earth and its regenerating at- 
mospheres. "Eat at your table," said 
Confucius, " as you would eat at the table 
59 



The Balanced Life 

of the King." There are men and women 
who detect sacred beauty in the features of 
the commonplace, who pluck garlands from 
common bushes and wear them as coronets. 
Drinking of the lucid water, clear as light 
in solution, they assimilate its spiritual 
quality. The sparkle of the dew on the 
grass in the purity and peace of the dawn 
incites them to adore, and every event and 
form of life yield them wider horizons of 
feeling and faith. They pluck from his 
bosom the secret of the sun, by an ineffable 
and hidden alchemy transform the round 
globe into their own personality, and the 
deep inhalations of life abide with them 
forever. 
Opening Lg|. |.j^g spirit opcu to the immensity of 
things, for we are happy, light, and free as 
we come to know intimately the world that 
God has made. There are multitudes of 
people who behold the earth as exiles and 
strangers. The starry skies, the deep 
forests and rocking sea, have for them a 
foreign and hostile appearance. Genuine 
60 



In the Stream of Power 

men and women feel a passionate love for 
life and the whole of life. Life, to be joyous, 
must be loved and companionable; how 
can we be happy while inwardly debating 
whether it is really worth living ? When 
we meet a soul whose acts are all regal, 
graceful and fragrant as roses, we thank 
God that such things can be and are. Let 
us never put faith in the wisdom that is 
based on contempt of a single thing that 
God has made, and false philosophy and 
doubt will drop away from us as effete 
substances. 

^^We shall,'' says Fichte, "go on always Making 
making our own world.'' This is clearly 
seen when the disposition suddenly veering 
alters the very air and landscape and dark- 
ens the sky. There are happy people in 
every walk of life and even where misery 
seems to reign unmolested. That we 
make our circumstances is proven by the 
fact that circumstances shift with the 
shifting moods. The same brilliance of 
the day is bright to one, black to another, 
6i 



The Balanced Life 

and to still another it is neither. A 
diseased or wounded body will writhe 
amid scenes where eager lips are pressed to 
the goblet of pleasure. A universal mis- 
conception is abroad that the circum- 
stance yields the joy which can only spring 
from right condition and attitude of spirit. 
Surroundings adapt themselves to the 
character with the perfection of water to 
the body of the bather, and all deformities 
and graces are inevitably shadowed forth. 
Health It is health and appetite that impart 
appetite, sweetness to bread and water; it is the 
quality of life that gives the mountain air 
its exhilarating property. An invalid will 
swoon on glowing altitudes, dying amid 
the purest ethers. The musical creator, so 
called, creates nothing, he only discovers 
the music that is already in his soul, and 
the sounds of the harmonic universe be- 
come a confused noise to him who has no 
melody in his nature. As we become in 
ourselves deeper, purer, sweeter, so do the 
things about us reveal like graces. Place 
62 



In the Stream of Power 

yourself once more in line with universal 
law, accept the will of God, make a full 
use of life, and your desires will be attained. 

There is of course a certain healthy ^^^^^^y 

struggle. 

struggle in acquiring this adaptation. The 
infant, built to walk and run, has a first and 
natural difficulty in getting its balance; 
and the convalescing patient has to begin 
life over again and regain equilibrium and 
the use of his legs. It is the way of life, 
and in its own field congruous and right. 
We should not complain of trials and 
temptations, for they mean only that we 
are learning to handle the world, getting 
facility of feet and hands and precision 
of eyes. The young bird, fashioned to live 
in the air, at first flutters and falls clumsily 
to earth. The novitiate mechanic must 
experience a preliminary difficulty in fitting 
the tool to the hand, the fingers to the keys. 
Difficulty simply reveals the lack of facility, 
and with facility it vanishes. Difficulties 
are thus friendly messengers pointing out a 
crudeness that may be remedied. We find 
63 



The Balanced Life 

it difficult at first to do the simplest and most 

vital acts — even to eat, drink, or breathe. 

Difficulty is Difficulty is only the process of adiust- 

adjustment. -^ . . 

ment of the personality to life; the act of 
keying the raw^ and young existence to its 
environment. It is a good, normal, and 
healthy experience, and inexorably at- 
tached to grow^th. The nature that can 
thrive v^ithout spurs and barriers has not 
yet been born, nor will be. We vs^ork, not 
because we have time, but because life 
constrains us, and the divine police are 
behind us urging us onward ever and 
evermore. ^ It is good to battle, to suffer, 
to be thrown into the sea and left to save 
ourselves as best we can; as good for us 
as for the fledglings flirted out of the 
nest by the parental wing. ^ Do not despise 
your situation, in it you must live and act if 
you act at all; in it you must suffer and 
conquer. Let us remember that from 
every point of life we are equally near 
heaven and the Infinite. ^^Any place is 
good enough to live a life in," said that 
64 



In the Stream of Power 

brave and radiant soul, Robert Louis 
Stevenson. If we are to escape the grip of 
despair, we must believe that the whole of 
life is good and that ends justify means; 
that grief is a Fatherly grace, a purifying 
experience. 

Can we reahze all this optimism amid The 
the gathering shades of decrepitude and shades, 
age ^ Yes, with the aid of reason and 
faith, for in the light of immortality, age 
is only apparent, and decrepitude but a 
temporary and advantageous concomi- 
tant. Both have their correspondence in 
an ever-youthful and self-renewing world. 
The body, like nature, has its seasons that 
inevitably turn toward the springtide and 
the morning. Neither to man nor nature 
is there actual deterioration and death. 
When we enter the autumn of life and the 
graces and splendors of summer are fled, 
let us not forget that this period has its 
more sombre but not less charming beau- 
ties. Autumn is frequently darkened by 
raincloud and mist, saddened by falling 
5 6s 



The Balanced Life 

leaves and fading verdure, but the air is 
soft and serene, the colors subdued and 
warm, soothing to the eye, and the matured 
vegetation speaks of repose and comple- 
tion. It is the time of fruit, of harvest, of 
vintage; the sweet hour when hfe cul- 
minates with reward and the work-a-day 
is done. When the garland of youth fades 
on the brow there remains the wreath of 
maturity. The bins and vats overflow, 
the time of results has come, and the fruit 
hangs heavy and golden on the bough. 
The golden The suuset heralds the new and better 
oi^Imset. ^^Y which will foUow the brief eclipse of 
night. We grow serener, braver, wiser, as 
we stand between a well-spent past and 
the dawning of the new morning. Where 
there is power there must be age and 
experience, and the sixties have all the 
forties and twenties in them. The central 
wisdom dropping off all obstructions leaves 
the mind purified and peaceful. '' When- 
ever age is mentioned the doctrine of im- 
mortality is announced — it cleaves to the 
66 



In the Stream of Power 

constitution." At the close of life we are 
just ready for our true birth, and here lie 
the golden mystery of sunset and the sweet 
coming of the evening star. 



67 



Chapter IV 

The White Line of the Dawn 

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, 
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness. — Lowell. 

Tangled OOCIAL discordancv is not a matter of 

skeins. ^^^^ 

k^ debate, the clash of strife and battle 
song is as evident as the turbulence of 
the sea. The reconcihation of man to 
man and of man to God hastens slowly. 
The majority are but tangled skeins, 
so many specimens of restless or stag- 
nant chaos. Those great levelers, in- 
dustrial mechanism and conformity, have 
passed over society, dulling originality, and 
rolling down the masses into sameness. 
The ability to strike out new ways is 
weakened in a world so organized, and 
initiative is quenched. Did God design 
life as we find it raging about us today ^ 
Does He discourage independence, buoy- 
ancy, individuality ^ Was this vast and 
68 



The White Line of the Dawn 

sweltering mill of existence a portion of the 
precreative plan ? Do men, women, and 
children beating out their hopes in whirl- 
ing mills, in the dank and airless courts 
of our great cities, expire after a fixed law 
of divine wisdom ? We need not pause 
to deny. Health and freedom are God's 
beautiful regime. This much we know 
if we know Him: the power of His un- 
hindered life will be glad and unconfined, 
its pulses swinging to notes of joy. Like 
sweet waters rising through briny seas it 
will be irrepressible and curative. 

The ap;e that contains evils has also its^^^^?^7'^ 

^ ^ medicine. 

remedies near at hand. Like the ocean, 
society may cleanse itself by its own 
heaven-implanted properties; its medi- 
cine is within itself. Deep at society's 
center slumbers the sacred element from 
which will spring the new way of man. 
God yet breathes into it and His stars 
irradiate it. We can no more poison or 
sterilize humanity than the circumambient 
air, for its own inherent goodness will save 
69 



The Balanced Life 

it. We rely on the exhaustless moral 
force reservoired in the race. Society is a 
perennial font, welling up from the deep 
places of power and sweetness, bearing 
undying hope on its front. The mighty 
stream of infancy pouring into the veins 
of the world from unseen quarters is as 
regenerating as mountain breezes. We 
are impregnated with its innocence, and 
sin and sickness are fairly driven off the 
field by its rush of purity. The turbu- 
lence of life is only the foamy crest of the 
wave; beneath is absolute calm. 
The What can be more common and normal 

heaven-born 

fibre, than those waters which enclasp two-thirds 
of the globe ? what more general and 
measureless ? As a single drop of the sea 
contains all the properties of the whole, an 
ocean in little, each human soul enshrines 
the beauty and grandeur of the whole race. 
The life of the ploughman or sailor is in 
substance that of the noble or monarch, 
and both are heirs of God. It is the purity 
of the coin, and not its size, that gives it 
70 



The White Line of the Dawn 

worth. The value of man is in his quality. 
The hope of the final spirituaHzation of 
society is in this heaven-born fibre v^hich is 
the staple of great and small, inbred, stead- 
fast, persistent. To repudiate it v^ould be 
to repudiate life itself. From these divine 
sources society is arising as out of the 
domain of peace and pov^er. It is nobly 
free in its inheritance and will reject what 
is merely arbitrary, as plants rising under 
rocks rend or displace them. Life cannot 
be managed, muzzled, or conquered; it 
will have its own vital and lovely charac- 
teristics. Trust at last the common and 
universal heart, for its promptings are holy. 
The enerp-y of God is searching through God 

, ,., , ' .1 T -r searching 

souls like the sprmg sap m the trees. Liit souls. 
the cover from the blackest spirit, and lo! 
the light shines. The dumbest has in him 
a latent, unstirred goodness, undecipher- 
able, inarticulate, but, nevertheless, living, 
felt as an influence and not infrequently 
fraught with strange, transforming strength. 
There are lowly lives whose effect upon us 
71 



The Balanced Life 

is at once penetrating and purifying. They 
search our interiors and radiate in our ac- 
tions. Doctor Channing says : '' The great- 
est man is he who chooses the right with 
invincible resolution; who resists the 
sorest temptations from within and with- 
out; who bears the heaviest burdens 
cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and 
most fearless under menace and frowns; 
whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God 
is most unfaltering. I believe this great- 
ness to be the most common among the 
multitude whose names are never heard.'' 
That we are as good as we are is half owing 
to the influence of obscure souls lingering 
in our byways or whose bodies are resting 
in unvisited tombs, and whose very names 
will perish with their nearest kinsfolk. 
The angel The hope, then, of society is in that hid- 
den substance, universal and growing like 
the oak. In the passions that bend us like 
trees in the wind is that which will save 
us; it is love, oft overborne, oft un- 
bridled, but triumphant at last. In the 
72 



The White Line of the Dawn 

most ordinary person the power for good 
is enormous; in the vilest, love and justice 
are imperishable because they are the 
substance of their nature. We all worship 
the good, we all pray in spirit, if not in 
words; the reverence of the good and true 
captures us, because innate and instinctive. 
We are incorrigibly religious and hope- 
lessly noble. Our badness is only the 
fevered waves tossing above the profund- 
ities of love and peace. The angel of life 
will persist in spite of temptation and sin. 
What is being accomplished in the Life 

, r • 1 1 r wrought on 

heart oi society under the pressure oi the anvils 
living, and which nothing can arrest, is the 
flowering of the material and the industrial 
into the spiritual. Without design, and 
mostly without concern, it is inevitably 
coming. In the bright, crowded, and 
momentous arena of activity, transfigura- 
tion awaits us. Even slavish occupations 
and grinding toils educate us; as children, 
under surveillance at first, grow tardily 
to the freedom of service in love. The 
73 



The Balanced Life 

refining influence of labor is enormous, 
and every man's task is his life-preserver. 
The freeman feels that his occupation is 
dear to God and that he cannot be spared. 
Nothing in this world is more beautiful 
than toiling humanity in obscure places 
struggling toward perfection and light. 
That sane and strong beauty we behold 
in men and women of sincerity and practi- 
cality has been wrought at white heat on 
the anvils of toil. Every thought and act 
counts for symmetry, and equilibrium 
comes at last from long acquiescence to 
the universal demand. ^^My Father work- 
eth hitherto and I work." The grand 
resultant of civilization is to be mental and 
spiritual. As the rose is the spirit of the 
lowly soil, and the electric light the bright 
result of friction, so out of the travail of 
this commercial time will dawn a spiritual 
society. 
God's way. Why unwelcome processes are set to 
some bright end we may not pause to 
ask; it is for us to accept them and remem- 
74 



The White Line of the Dawn 

ber that it is God's way; to cheerfully 
acquiesce and carry through it all the white 
flower of a blameless and resolute action. 
Why we must push through the crust of 
struggle is as inscrutable as why daffodils 
and wheat spring out of loam. Millions 
are saved from emptiness and misery by 
the duty they cannot escape. Something 
to conquer and something w^e must con- 
quer is the bugle call to courage. Practical 
living develops reality and sense. ^^Life is 
a field in need of clearing; the indolent 
would lie down in it; the rebellious would 
rage to and fro in it; the good would accept 
the conditions as they are and attack it with 
plough and hoe.'' The duty is not for it- 
self, it is what it does for us that makes it 
worth while. The bad humor into which 
our task sometimes plunges us refutes its 
purpose, and we have the bitterness of the 
toil without the sweets of reward. Pre- 
serve your balance; it is a signal defeat 
for all the enemies of the soul. They 
desire nothing so much as to stir you 
75 



The Balanced Life 

to impotence. The preservation of bal- 
ance is among the highest and purest acts. 
Death and defeat are transfigurable by 
the spirit in which we meet them. The 
vanquished is often the victor. Every 
calamity, every pain, every bereavement, 
is an unploughed field, life not yet brought 
to equipoise and facility, difficulties not 
yet surmounted. The wildest storm-burst 
is but an incident of the long voyage 
heavenward, and to be met with a serenity 
and resolution that quiet its anger. 
A blow in Nothing will sweeten life like the love of 
of Nature, it; love's might is invincible; love sleeps 
not and wearies not; love is the artery of 
strength. The lack of it puts brakes on 
all the energies of being. A distaste for 
life is an insurrection against the whole 
universe, it is a blow in the face of Na- 
ture, for we are the vessels of God's life. 
When interest in life wanes, the wheels of 
being drive heavily, and the medium that 
unites us with the source of joy is severed. 
Once in the tide of love and we are pos- 
76 



The White Line of the Dawn 

sessed, as the winds possess the sails of the 
ship, and we are brought continually nearer 
to all the living and dead. Love places us 
in the course of our own nature, for are we 
not in the image of Love ? We can no 
more rid ourselves of love to our kind than 
of time and space; it is paramount and 
deathless. Existence itself implies the 
capacity to love. 

This granted, love of our kind cannot Love not 

^ . . difficult. 

be really difficult; we have only to yield 
to our tendency. We meet some who 
profess to love nature more than human 
kind, placing upon it the superscription 
of a more ideal beauty; they cultivate 
flowers and neglect men. But man is 
above nature, '' a little lower than the 
angels," the diademed lord of nature. No 
ineffable vision of nature surpasses the 
beauty of the maiden on the threshold of 
womanhood; no mountain carries the 
sublimity of a king of men. As men 
tread on miracles, turning them beneath 
the sod with their ploughshares, careless 
77 



The Balanced Life 

of their marvels, so we pass unrecognized 
immortals on our dusty way. We can only 
love God truly through the love of men, and 
the signature of Deity is stamped on man 
as on nothing else; he has dwelt in the 
mountain with his Master till his features 
beam with divine lustre, 
u • 1,.^^^^ Love your friends and do not put them 

brightness! J ^ 

from you; tell them of your care again and 
again; prove your words by loyal acts, and 
repeat the proof; it is like iterated bars of 
music in the score. Make them happy; 
give them brightness; have pity on the 
poor and the erring, and your pity will 
lead you surely to the heights where you 
can comprehend how the valleys are filled 
and the hills made low. A genuine man 
does not want to cut himself loose from 
his stock; he would remain forever in con- 
tact with the home soil. Each and all 
spring out of the glebe of common society, 
as the trees great and small rise out of the 
same earth, making no claim to preemi- 
nence. Caste is not a reality among the 
78 



The White Line of the Dawn 

sons of God. Great lives, like great trees, 
have their roots in the same brown earth. 
Mountains are the identical ground of the 
plains shoved up into sublimities whose 
plumes brush the sky. It is from the life 
of everyday that the rays of heaven are 
flashed. 

The native love of men lends us thej^^s^^, 

beneath 

power to brighten the world. Our work- the feet. 
a-day hours should be crowded with 
benediction, for are we not the formed 
channels of that Life from which all 
benediction flows ? It is a heartening 
world when we are ourselves, and a world 
well worth having; its atmosphere braces 
us to do our best. We are a gallant 
company of fellow-mortals mounting the 
heights from glory to glory. Let us bestow 
in the same full measure we have received. 
Happy is he whose heart is neither stinted 
nor contaminated, for light is sown be- 
neath his feet. 

It is granted us to summon each other^.^e^iple 

IT • • 111- -ni of gladness. 

to lite, joy, music, and holiness. 1 he 
79 



The Balanced Life 

mountain edelweiss blossoms at the bor- 
der-line of snow and soil, and the sweet 
plant of human joy grows in the alluvium 
of our humanity, be it ever so sterile. 
Where life is simple and sane, true pleasure 
is found even though it be yoked to poverty 
and toils. Deprived of the very things 
usually considered as the necessary con- 
ditions of enjoyment, it will spring out of 
the fissures of the rock, on the arid hill, 
or between the flags of the pavement. 
The Ordainer of life wove gladness into 
the very architecture of man, making him 
its temple. In his elemental condition he 
is a vessel brimmed with gladness, the 
gladness of the child. 
^^^^ In his Samoan home Robert Louis 

benefactors. 

Stevenson listened to the song of the 
crickets at eventide, glad that these poor 
creatures were so happy, and wondering 
what was wrong with man that he too 
did not wind up the day wuth an hour 
or two of shouting. The world is fam- 
ishing for cheer, and the real benefactors 
80 



The White Line of the Dawn 

of men are those who have breathed it into 
society Hke mountain air. Disease and 
sadness cannot Hve in the atmosphere of 
affirmative beauty and truth. There are 
days v^hen we wish well to the universe 
and when the commonest services and the 
humblest of God's creatures delight us; 
these are the hours when we come to our- 
selves and are what we were made to be 
always. Do not resist your impulses to 
sympathy and geniality, be ready in the 
work of healing hearts, pursue your voca- 
tion of hope with eagerness, for thus you 
bring your best life to men. Hold the 
full chalice to the lips of men and leave the 
rest to God. If the blunderer and ingrate 
vex you, keep sweet, chide not, lend a hand; 
they blunder always toward the light by a 
sure instinct, as the traveler in the slough 
struggles with every effort a little nearer the 
steadfast land. 

We are beloved of God and He is ^ ^^^f^^ 

for life 

responsible for our ultimate deliverance, as it is. 
There is a reason for life as it stands 
6 8i 



The Balanced Life 

this moment, otherwise it would cease 
at once to be. ''Hast thou created the 
world and art thou charged with its gov- 
ernment ?" Toss the planet from your 
frail shoulders, you are not Atlas and can- 
not bear it up; quit the orbit of the stars 
and tread the path beneath your feet. 
The pleasure of life comes with faith and 
acquiescence in destiny. Every true soul 
has the weight of this ballast; it makes 
peace possible even in the breast of mys- 
tery and pain. How beautiful it is to live 
to make the world happy! Let the song 
never die away, and the dance never cease; 
let laughter flow like melodious waters 
singing to the sea! 
Inner ^ht Condition of the inner Hfe colors 

states color 

events, circumstanccs, and, if right, mitigates and 
adapts them to the soul. When this 
divine inheritance is developed roundly 
and fully, when it takes the outward 
form of its elemental substance, we shall 
touch earth and heaven as the brook its 
pebbly bed. Then in the still, lucid deeps 
82 



The White Line of the Dawn 

of being the spirit will rest as on the bosom 
of Love; then will spring up those fountains 
of tenderness and strength that* refresh the 
arid plains of society. We are men, not 
by the value of our estates, or by the extent 
of our education, but by the strength of this 
inner fibre. The important thing is that 
at the axis of our oft turbulent and way- 
ward self we should remain man and con- 
serve the requisites of manhood. The 
secret of living is to give the inner beauty 
and goodness vital and appropriate ex- 
pression. The flowers wear their hearts 
in their features and by their manners we 
know them as they are within. 

Three-fourths of our work is done within ^Y^5^ ^^^^ 

witmn us. 

US, and our demeanor should be a pure re- 
flection of our hearts. The world's greatest 
asset is the souls it is silently rearing in 
the bosom of society. When we recognize 
the inner law, and bow before it, the solu- 
tion of all difficulties will be reached. Until 
we materialize conscience and love in life 
we shall not truly live. He who believes 
83 



The Balanced Life 

this can no more play to the galleries than 
the full-flighted bird can return to the 
shell. Does our pleasure lie in mere cir- 
cumstances ? Can events give or take it 
away ? Build up in your soul the lofty city 
of peace well within sound of the battle 
and, if needful, out of the midst of its strife. 
Beautiful The beautiful souls of the world possess 
the power of transmuting other souls into 
their own loveliness. Shining on their 
fellows, they are more potent than codes of 
laws or militant armies. Through them 
God breathes again upon men and they 
live. We must have hearts as broad and 
sweet as nature if we are to carry healing 
to men on whom the mildew and the 
blight have fallen. '' Be good at the depths 
of you and you will discover that those 
surrounding you will be good even to 
the same depths.'' The neglected and 
degenerate are brought into touch with 
fine spiritual natures, and, yielding to 
their penetrating, aflSrmative forces, begin 
straightway to form after their likeness. 
84 



The White Line of the Dawn 

They absorb the quahty of others as the 
steel the magnet. Moses' face shone with 
the lustre of his high Companionship 
in the mountain, his very exterior gilded 
with the light of Truth. 

Goodness has a pervadinp;, saturatinp;^^^^^?^^ ^^ 

^ ^ ^ pervading. 

quality that charms and changes those 
who yield themselves to its influence. A 
single comer will bring a new climate 
into a room as distinct and radiating as 
when the sun bursts in at the doorway, 
and, departing, leave behind the bright, 
vivifying gift. A single speaker will charge 
the souls of thousands of men and women 
with his own high courage and faith, 
and each will carry home a heart full 
enough to spare to still others. There is no 
institution so poor and withered but if a 
strong man could be born into it would 
leap to its feet with new life. A joyless 
home may be turned into a paradise by the 
music of one voice and the light of one face. 
There are men and women who wear upon 
their features the beauty of holiness. 
85 



The Balanced Life 

Contagious j^- [^ gaid that young nightingales seem 
to be unhappy in the presence of those 
elder birds that fill the summer nights with 
their songs. The music is in them in pos- 
sibility, but their unfledged state will not 
allow them to utter it as yet and they ap- 
pear to be depressed. But they listen, are 
saturated, intoxicated with harmony, and 
end by singing in their turn with equal 
sweetness. Joy is infectious. Seek men in 
their troubles with no mere off'er of money, 
but also with your heroism and your hope. 
Give them clearness of thought, a rejuvenat- 
ing belief, and the solace of love. Let us see 
what new stock we can add to humanity, 
how much higher we can carry life. Each 
advancing tide should break a little farther 
on the beach as the ocean of humanity 
fluxes toward destiny. We are men in the 
ratio that we make hfe richer and grander 
• for ourselves and for our friends. 
Power BeHef in inevitable and lofty destiny 

of belief. . . - . . , 

is a potent factor in brmgmg harmony to 

the world. He who sees only the circum- 

86 



The White Line of the Dawn 

scribed radius at his feet, who fails to 
catch the unity of the whole creation, can 
be neither useful nor joyful. Our view of 
life is frequently that of the lad who has 
never been beyond the limits of his native 
village and whose conceptions are neces- 
sarily crude and narrow. The universe 
is infinitely roomy, and the man of vision 
finds himself domesticated in its vastness. 
The great souls are conscious of the frater- 
nity and symphony of all worlds. Since 
God lives and loves, in the final reckoning 
His creations must turn out to be good. 
Have faith in Him and His purposes! The 
trooping years lead onward to a conclusion 
we cannot quite see, which suffering and 
militant humanity is pursuing across the 
laborious years. Bathe the facts of today 
in the atmosphere of belief that we are 
daily drawing nearer the plateaus of 
peace, reconciliation, and equipoise. 

A genuine and high faith centralizes pur- Faith 

dr* -I' r ' 1 1 centralizes 

action. Beliei is more than hy- purpose. 

pothesis, it is the spirit's open vision of that 

87 



The Balanced Life 

which is to come; it is God lifting the veil 
from His face. Faith abandoned is the 
compass dropped overboard in mid-seas. 
To the radiant believer there are no prob- 
lems — there is mystery, but not perplexity; 
his trust gives him confidence; his faith 
gives him rest and nourishment even in 
outward poverty and desolation. The race 
will survive all catastrophes, rising steadily 
and ever higher by its deathless faith. 
Belief in the best will push it at last to 
transfiguration, as the energy in the waking 
seed or young oak pushes up the soil. Let 
us avoid those dark and tortuous alleys of 
thought that lead away from the ultimate 
outcome of the good. The great need is 
for each to feel the sanctity and perpetuity 
of the lowliest of the race, and to remember 
that it has something within it that will 
shape it continually to the divinest Model, 
and from which influence it is impossible 
to escape. 
Graduated The flower is the child of the stalk, and 
there are beautiful intervening steps as- 
88 



The White Line of the Dawn 

cending to its heights. We cannot reach 
heaven at a single bound; God's method 
is graduated ascent. It would be as easy 
to seize a mountain by its base and hold it 
at arm's length as to alter this irrefutable 
law. 'Life is built cell by cell through 
millenniums of sun and storm, and the 
growth of the soul must be inexpressibly 
slower than anything else, as it is inex- 
pressibly vaster. Each generation adds its 
best to the best of the store of all previous 
generations, carrying life, by a sort of 
divine arithmetic, imperceptibly to higher 
and finer positions. The humble and 
healthy masses are the soil out of which 
great lives spring; heaven rests its base 
upon the earth. 

Why is life as we meet it so imperfect. Why life is 

11 . • 1 r n 1 r • imperfect. 

why does it persistently fall short of its 
best ? Simply because it is advancing, 
growing life; in other words, because it is 
alive; its seeming lack is an evidence of 
its greatness. It is for the same reason 
that the opening flower, or the shooting 
89 



The Balanced Life 

plant, is imperfect — it is on its way thither. 
The planet on which we Hve is in the 
dawn of its wonderful day; cosmic students 
count its rings of advance as the woodman 
notes the circles of the fallen tree. Even 
its flora and fauna are still multiplying 
into more variegated loveliness. The 
march of the race is nearer its beginning 
than its close; rising out of ferment and 
darkness, it does not yet appear what it 
shall be. But those who wake in the 
night, anxiously scanning the horizon, 
breathe again; for where the gloom is pal- 
ing breaks on their eyes the white line 
of the dawn. Signs of hope are every- 
where seen vibrating in the life of today. 
A spiritual A spiritual epoch is immediately upon us 
at hand, and humanity is struggling from beneath 
the weight of materialism that crushes 
it down. A sacred influence enfolds and 
reassures. ''Have we," asks Claude de 
Saint-Martin, ''advanced one step farther 
on the radiant path of enlightenment that 
leads to the simplicity of man ?" All who 
90 



The White Line of the Dawn 

are awake give a quick and glad affirmative. 
The alert heart sees an increasing eman- 
cipation, a continuous ascent of being 
toward life, happiness, justice, and love. 
The code of morality is growing purer, 
progressing with light and firm step to 
places invisible to the many because fleshly 
veils yet cover their eyes. We are traveling 
not into the gloom of the pit, but up the 
mountain side that disappears above the 
cloud line merged in the deep blue of 
heaven, symbol of the eternal and the 
true. 



91 



Chapter V 

Built Without Hands 

"There is but one temple in the universe and that is 
the body of man." — Novalis. 

But one A | ARE noblest creation in the material 
X universe is the body of man, its ap- 
pearance and motion when perfect being 
comparable only to exquisite music — the 
music of vision. Nothing else so enthralls 
the eye and stirs the senses. Enduring 
beauty belongs to pure, majestic outline 
and depth of tint; to the last it thrills like 
some glorious Greek temple. There are 
human figures grander than architecture 
whose influence is like the strains of some 
high epic. We demand physical excel- 
lence, and justly, for the body should be 
the fitting mantle of the soul wrought in the 
similitude of the Supreme Beauty. The 
craving for symmetry is an instinct we 
can never lose. A deathless being should 
92 



Built Without Hands 

be suitably clad, and a divine impatience 
moves us when he appears in shabby and 
ill-fitting attire. The thirst for beauty is a 
concomitant of our faith in God; be- 
cause we believe in God we believe in man 
and search earnestly and expectantly for 
His superscription on the human coin. 
We are entirely right in insisting that man 
should realize his possibility. All things 
aspire to the divine Beauty, and most of all 
man. 

The unveiling of a human body stirs The 

^ , . ^ . . , -^ , vision of 

US to a sense oi worship, tor it is the closest Deity. 
approach to the external vision of Deity, the 
loftiest illustration of supernal Loveliness. 
The Greek statue lives today because it is 
a reproduction of man's body in his best 
estate. The Form in the midst of the 
Golden Candlesticks was a more spiritual 
revelation of the ideal man. The Greeks 
were paragons of physical purity and health, 
wearing the sublimest bodies yet built in 
the world. Those ideal limbs and muscles 
sculptured of old were not chiseled from 
93 



The Balanced Life 

the brain of some high dreamer, but were 
close copies of men and women beneath 
whose pink flesh ran the rich hfe of the 
race. They were the everyday folk who 
ate, slept, and labored under Hellenic 
skies. The body is the drapery of a soul 
taking the outline of that which it covers 
and intimating the figure of God. Is it 
wonderful that every other object pales 
before it ^ 
O beautiful Q beautiful human life! creation's su- 

life ! 

premest utterance! Is it, then, a weak- 
ness to be wrought upon by the curves 
of feminine beauty ? Pure human out- 
line ravishes us to the last, and from a 
divine prompting, for it is a finite rendering 
of Deity. To be shapely and wholesome 
is more than wealth, power, fame, all 
that ambition can give — they are as dust 
before it. 
What The development and care of the body 

ineffable ....,/ r ' ' u U ' 

housing! are or mitial importance^ tor it is the basis 
of life; here life poises for everlasting flight, 
and without this base of resistance has 
94 



Built Without Hands 

no sure footing. To be sure, the well-being 
of the body is determined largely by the 
state of the spirit; yet the body in its turn 
reacts upon the master soul. No power 
of genius can play upon a shattered harp, 
nor can the finest constructed eye see 
correctly through a stained or blurred 
medium. The lesson of the times is the 
importance of the body, the value of keep- 
ing it sweet, sane, and proportionate. 
What ineffable housing God has given 
the spirits of men! A sound body is the 
avenue of freedom, force, and gladness; 
power and joy are the attributes of well 
people. Health transmutes living into 
rapture, body and spirit blending in one 
orb of light. 

Let us reverence the flesh and lead it Reverence 

the flesh. 

to its highest possibility. By our mis- 
taken methods of living we are polluting 
its springs and smiting its delicate con- 
struction. Do we not recall the days of 
our youth when we vibrated like a harp, 
and the world sang in every vein and nerve ? 
95 



The Balanced Life 

Simple health was our ecstasy, we did not 
know we had bodies, we walked not, but 
flew; we had fire, thrift, courage, were 
full-blooded and bursting with energy. A 
sterile body is to the soul what sterile soil 
is to the plant; the soul droops. We 
cannot grow roses in the sands. If we 
mutilate or starve life, it can not sing 
to us. Let us cherish this upspringing 
joy; increase of healthy natural life is 
accompanied by a new power of spirit, for 
heart and mind must root and grow in the 
body. 
The inner While the body has an unquestioned 

creates . -^ . . . . 

the outer, influence on the spirit, we know it is the 
spirit which is master, and is that which 
produces and controls the body. Every- 
where and with everything it is a law that 
the inner creates the outer. The hidden 
life of the seed builds the structural pansy 
or nettle according to its secret quality. 
The plant is an expositor of the chemicals 
within its stem. Nevertheless, this in- 
terior power may be hampered or spoiled 
96 



Built Without Hands 

by mutilation of the root or leaves. Life 
is cooperative or interdependent, the within 
and the without playing upon and modify- 
ing one another. Yet we must cling to 
the fact that the essential is the inner, for 
without it there could be nothing at all. 
There must be melody in the soul before 
song is possible, and yet a defective larynx 
would prohibit the divinest expression. In 
the heart of the nut lie coiled beauty and 
majesty, then the heart of oak and arms 
that clasp the skies. First, essential spirit- 
ual life; then the human form divine. 

Beauty of body and soul are necessarily ^^^^7 
allied; still the principle does not always and soul. 
hold closely in the immediate generation. 
The faintest trace of physical comeliness 
indicates divine spiritual traits in the an- 
cestral line, as the least deformity whis- 
pers the fact of covert evil. Our spiritual 
parts are so fluid and mutable, answer so 
quickly to the emotions, or the character, 
that they reflect instantly the condition of 
the character. So, in heaven, we shall 
7 97 



The Balanced Life 

know as we are known. Our bodies being 
material are less responsive, often fixed 
beyond any power of the spirit to change 
them; as the bent tree in its age can only 
be straightened by killing it. But a few 
generations of right living will turn the 
bad inheritance back to its normal sym- 
metry. It may be we cannot always cor- 
rect our own bodies; but we can correct 
those of the coming generation; and very 
much can be done immediately where there 
is an imperial and dominating individu- 
ality. ' 
Building Ulrici conceives of the thoup;hts, vo- 

tne spiritual ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

body, litions, and actions proceeding from our 
inner daily life as building the spiritual 
body of the future. If what we are within 
builds the outer fabric of character, as 
the sap of the tree rears its innumerable 
cells; and if the outer fabric of character 
is to be the body of the spiritual existence, 
Ulrici must be right. It is invariable 
that every thing that has life fashions its 
outer covering from its inner self; that 
98 



Built Without Hands 

covering defines and represents the in- 
habitant, be it nautilus, plant, animal, or 
angel. We proclaim what we are in our 
appearance and demeanor; what is whis- 
pered in closets is told upon the housetops. 
If we were expecting a pure heart to take 
human shape before our eyes, we should 
feel instinctively that it must be beautiful; 
anything less would shock our faith in God. 
We are sure that truth and purity should 
be framed in the utmost external beauty, 
in an inseparable union, one of which can 
not survive the other. It is this feeling that 
causes us to set our worship of faith and 
love in such outline, hue, and melody. 
Virtue and goodness should have the 
added outward grace, another summer 
than that of June should flood their lives. 
Penetrated by heavenly harmonies they 
should become as the angels are. 

We feel that the revelation of goodness Goodness 

in the face. 

should be unmistakable in the face. We 
can not but feel that peculiar sweetness 
and majesty were manifest in the Saviour's 

99 LofC 



The Balanced Life 

bearing when His enemies reeled and fell 
backward at a flash of His face, or 
when harlots and wretches crowded about 
Him to catch the power of His healing 
touch. Jerome and Augustine think that 
His features were fraught with sacred 
beauty. 

The announcement of the soul in the 
tones of the voice, in articulate words vi- 
brating from unseen depths of holiness, we 
know well. The principle must hold, if not 
immediately, that the outer is a perfect cor- 
respondent of the inner. It may happen 
that a comely spirit is incarcerated for the 
moment in the body of a dwarf, or looks 
through the features of a libertine; but in 
a generation or two, if the life-quality is 
tenaciously held, it will come to its own 
normal external grace. 
The new Jt Jg incredible what the gift of volition, 

spiritual , . . . . 

force, tempered by a sane and optimistic in- 
tellect, will accomplish. It will set the 
blood dancing in every cell and organ of 
the frame; it will so fortify the flesh that it 

lOO 



Built Without Hands 

will repel polluting influences; it will rout 
fear and fling open the doors of promise. 
What can not the average man do when 
this new spiritual force possesses him ? 
He rejuvenates like the drooping plant 
under the restoring rains of heaven. The 
places, postures, and dispositions that once 
knew him, know him no more; he is 
simply transfigured. His very raiment 
and habitation seem to have recovered 
dignity. The muscles of his face and the 
lines of his figure take on newer and better 
design, he regains a certain lost stateli- 
ness. A new physical life becomes the 
alert vehicle of the new man. We are 
beginning to know the regnancy of the 
mind over mere brute matter. As sun- 
shine ripens wheat and paints the apple, 
the radiance of the spirit leads the body 
to its predestined beauty. 

Our thinkinp; must be radically altered '^^^^^^g 

^ ^ ^ -^ must be 

before beauty will become universal. The radically 
physical ideal is the emergence of an inner 
ideal held steadily for a long while in pur- 

lOI 



The Balanced Life 

pose. When mentality is enamored of 
health, beauty, and holiness, rather than 
lucre, fashion, and play, the divine ideal will 
slowly incarnate itself in the generations 
yet unborn. A marked advance could be 
made in two or three generations if there 
were strong unity of interest. We should 
begin at once, for almost any point can 
ultimately be scaled when the life is actu- 
ated by an absorbing and indomitable 
resolve. If the features, build, and dis- 
position of the unborn can be determined 
by setting prenatal influences in motion, 
by persistently keeping before the mind 
beautiful and strong thoughts and visions, 
we can see here a power at work and 
available that will, if called upon, modulate 
the whole face of society. Says Emerson, 
^'I would have a man enter his house 
through a hall filled with heroic and 
sacred sculpture that the sight might in- 
spire him to copy.'' It is certain that the 
faultless statuary of Greece had its prena- 
tal influence on the race. ' 

I02 



Built Without Hands 

The refluent action of the outer on the^^^^^^^ 
inner may cramp and retard the develop- the flesh, 
ment of the inner under certain phases of 
Hfe, be the soul ever so vigilant or un- 
discouraged. The whole truth should be 
told here. The soundest intellect must 
have a clear eye or it cannot possibly dis- 
criminate truly. We must not, and can 
not, ignore the pediment of life. It mat- 
ters not how keen the mind, it can not en- 
joy the radiance of the day nor catch its 
ineff^able and mingled hues through an in- 
flamed optic; all its glory is abridged by 
that one defect. Physical abuse, by over- 
work or overplay, ends in stupidity of 
mind and heart. The nice balance of 
action and rest, the proper variety of both, 
renew the whole spirit and body. If the 
idlers knew the joy of work, and the in- 
flexibly sober the rejuvenation of play, 
they would be up and at it. We live 
gaily, eflPectively, proportionately, when we 
accept the variation of interest the system 
demands. We should handle our bodies 
103 



The Balanced Life 

with more gentleness and intelligence than 
the most priceless mechanism whose in- 
jury would involve irreparable loss. When 
all the embrasures of the spirit are clean 
and transparent, when each spring and 
cog has perfect play, we are men. 
Life clears i^[f^ casts ofF him who poUutes its 

Itself. . . . ^ 

springs, clearing itself of danger by a divine 
necessity. The blue heaven, the flowers, and 
the tuneful waters can not tell him the 
secret of their joy, for he is past compre- 
hending them. He feels himself shut 
out of existence, the most terrible of 
excommunications, insulated from nature 
and society with its dear loves and sensa- 
tions. When the physical forces have 
been rioted away, and the keenness 
of the senses seared, there is a famine 
of joy; the soul is, as it were, without foot- 
hold, with no natural medium through 
which to touch the sensuous objects about 
it; the heaven-born instincts have no 
vehicle of expression. One vicious habit 
destroys the equation of the whole man; 
104 



Built Without Hands 

we need not harbor all the vices at once to 
founder in mid-seas. A missing pin or cog 
will make the finest chronometer valueless. 

He who respects his life has the pure^^.^^,^^^ , 

^ . ^ childhood. 

joys of the opening years; he has held fast 
the primitive capacity for happiness and 
reentered the Kingdom of the Child. A 
precious vigor runs through his veins like 
the juice through the bole of the oak. 
'^His conserved and nourished youth 
gives him a sacred intoxication which 
does not flag nor weary even when his 
body is full of years, and to the last the 
whole earth sings in his heart.' This is 
the secret of the eternal childhood of some 
rare friends. The life thrills along the 
corridors of a frame that raises no bars 
or impediments, the dual flesh and spirit 
mingling in one gladness. The full- 
blooded senses do not dull spiritual and 
mental power, but on the contrary lend 
them energy and wings. It can not be 
that the full complement of one part should 
be detrimental to another. Abundance of 



The Balanced Life 

physical life invites the soul to deeper and 
realer draughts. The senses sterilized, 
or starved, are certain to cripple intellect 
and w^eaken morality. There are bodies 
that drug the soul into a lethargy that in- 
creases until death. 
The story Daily events make their indelible record 

of life. . -^ 

in the body; face and form are a moving 
palimpsest on which personal history is 
graved, legend beneath legend. The 
story of our life is written in us like the 
history of the earth in the rocks. Our 
glory or shame is published in the car- 
riage of the figure, the language of the face, 
and the quality of speech. Joy, grief, 
sin, mystery, gain, loss, are the tools of 
the cunning graver. Yet nothing can be 
wholly outward with such variant beings 
as we are; the body feels the moulding of 
its spirit, of the people and objects out- 
side of it, the influence of the whole crea- 
tion. The soul may smite the body, but 
it will smite back in full measure. Days 
and nights of fervid life, intercourse with 
io6 



Built Without Hands 

angels and demons, innumerable fashion- 
ing hands, make their mystic impress on 
the face, alter the speech, and transform 
the individuaHty. Look, therefore, to 
your interior Hfe, if you would display a 
beautiful and noble exterior. Meet exi- 
gencies with calmness and courage, let 
love and truth shine through all the win- 
dows of your being. 

We are discoverinp; that the body is a Not mere 
mmglmg oi many thmgs, a blendmg oi 
spirit and matter, and not mere flesh, as 
the physiologists used to say. Character, 
we are beginning to see, determines largely 
the health of the bodily organs. The 
plant is a little soil, sunshine, water, light, 
air, and many other indescribable and 
yet undiscovered elements. The body of 
man contains these, penetrated by spiritual 
energy; withdraw the spirit, and it lapses 
instantly into a cold lump of clay. There 
is no such thing as pure physical beauty 
connected with such a being as man; the 
inscrutable thing we call soul and mind sup- 
107 



The Balanced Life 

plies the beauty; she sits upon the brow, 
beams in the eye, is everything, yet view- 
less and intangible. The villain or saint re- 
ports himself from within through his body. 
He darkens or glorifies it with his spirit. 
Seeking life. Of all the mysteries, none are so pro- 
found as life; scientists and theologians 
have sought it in the pineal gland of the 
brain, in the beating heart or the beam- 
ing eye; but life is everywhere and can 
not be excluded from any atom of the 
frame; only the whole of man is man. 
He is destroyed by the kind of definition 
that is sometimes given of him, the life and 
personality are left out in the reckoning. 
Analysis leaves him like the rose after it has 
come out of the chemist's alembic; there 
are so many ingredients, but where is the 
divine entity, the color, the fragrance, the 
inimitable something we call rose ^ Man 
is that subtile and complicated wonder that 
lives and shines in every inch of him. 
The hour has arrived when we are to accept 
him in his entirety, and not indulge in too 
io8 



Built Without Hands 

much definition. In our missionary propa- 
ganda we no longer attempt to save the 
soul alone, for we see that man must 
have a saved body if the soul is to have 
any power. We understand that we must 
begin at the base; a structure cannot 
properly rise by giving first attention to 
the pinnacles and towers. Educators are 
discovering that the pabulum of their 
instruction is moral, that religion in its 
purest forms may be taught in the secular 
schools. Not long ago the doctor's minis- 
trations were supposed to end with the 
flesh, bones, and nerves; now he knows that 
the flesh is interlaced with spirit, and that he 
must treat also the spiritual nature of his 
patient. 

The church of the future will deal^H^^^^^ 

the future. 

with the whole man and fling juiceless 
ecclesiasticism to the winds. It will 
come to see that deformity and disease 
are profanities of life, subversions of 
the divine intent, blows at beneficent 
law. There were ages when men thought 
109 



The Balanced Life 

only of their bodies, and dwelt exclusively 
in the lower apartments of themselves; it 
was the epoch of ''the feet of clay," and 
the spirit burned dim and low. In later 
times there was another swing of the 
pendulum, and men lived as though they 
had no bodies, tried to exterminate them 
as objects of evil. This was a worse con- 
dition than the former, for the soul had 
no soil in which to root itself and grow. 
But the light is breaking and we are finding 
that sweet and sane balance wherein each 
is treasured and cultured. The creature 
of the Creator is coming to his own. 
The new Philanthropy, science, and relip;ion are 

conservation. ^ \ -^ ^ p 

catching the idea of the unity of life. We 
are testing the influence of character on the 
nerves, and finding it vastly more potent 
than drugs. We are coming to see that if 
we would be well we must be good, if we 
would be happy we must be true. The 
conservation of all the vital forces of the 
life, including the mental and spiritual, is 
that new science of conservation of force 
no 



Built Without Hands 

that will work miracles of healing. Those 
unseen agencies that breathe upon us 
from other worlds are becoming our 
strongest allies. We see that life is not, as 
we thought in our earlier days, composed 
of eating, sleeping, and action; it is a 
consecration to those finer instincts which 
alone can give meaning and value to the 
earthly term. Living in the spirit and the 
flesh is our privilege for the moment. 

The body should have full reverence and Ta^e the 

J ^ risk of 

the complete satisfaction of its God-given living. 
appetites, for in its place it is as holy as 
the spirit; we should listen to its varied 
claims without giving it the rein. Let 
us take the risk of living while we may; 
let us wade deep into the tide of 
being; a few years more or less and we 
shall have had our earthly day and the 
spirit will have done with it forever. 
Meanwhile there is the glowing hour call- 
ing us to the ultimate experience. Every 
bit of deep true living is just so much more 
of the dear old world built into the man- 
in 



The Balanced Life 

sion of the soul. Only thus can we carry 
the world with us, take it up into us, and 
transform it into thought and personality. 
So will the world sing in our heart long 
after we have left it; so will we gather up 
the wisdom and affection symbolized in 
its objects, casting away the husk; so 
assimilate those native and vigorous in- 
fluences that will abide with us forever. 
Let us emulate the Greeks' enthusiasm for 
bodily beauty and strength, the school- 
men's reverence for learning, and the 
saints' love of God, binding them in a 
triple sheaf for the harvest. 
Nature j|- Jq^s not require so p-reat an effort as we 

with us. . 

are apt to think to get back to the foun- 
tains of joy, for our birthright lies in that 
direction. When the flesh is wounded 
nature is with us, and the parts begin 
at once to mend and knit themselves 
together. Nature is ever affirmative and 
sides with the Infinite; give her way, 
honor the law, and she will cure deformity 
and erase scars, as she decorates the rugged 

112 



Built Without Hands 

mountain with verdure. Our unfledged 
sciences are unwittingly engaged in tying 
nature's hands and bandaging her eyes. 
We have only to lift the floodgates and 
the streams will flow, only to drop trust- 
fully into the currents of her power. In 
spite of the cataclysms of aeons the 
old earth is as young as the morning. 
How wholesome is the sea, how aromatic 
the woods, how youthful the dawn ! There 
is a wide and complex sanitation impreg- 
nating the whole structure of the world. 
Hidden away in every department of her life 
it is yet near and available for every need. 

The successful physician goes into part- Not drugs 
nership with Nature and takes reverent in- submission. 
struction at her feet; he prescribes not 
drugs so much as intelligent submission to 
her ways. Even the physically feeble, if 
they could but realize it, have preserved 
within them an unconquerable moral 
force that would hft their shattered 
bodies from the dust. Latent and ele- 
mental potency once summoned almost 
8 113 



The Balanced Life 

builds the body anew. There is bound- 
less hope for all, and the surprising is in 
its budding life. God has always left us 
another resource; there is always another 
opportunity. '^ If my bark sink 'tis . . . to 
another sea." If this were not true, there 
would be some real foundation for despair. 
Health an J ^jg^ to think of health as an obliga- 

obligation. . , . . -p 

tion as well as a priceless privilege. It 
is really our duty to be well. If our 
ancestors had kept the law, we should 
not know what weakness or disease means 
more than the angels. But they have 
left us this legacy of woe which we are to 
overcome with faith and life. Nature 
will be beautiful if she is not interfered 
v^^ith. To the spiritual philosopher the 
beautiful is the rule, the point to which 
every force returns as soon as hindrances 
are withdrawn. Currents fall to their 
homes in the ocean, tides flux and ebb, 
forests seek the sky, flowers bloom and 
scatter incense upon the air; and man, 
built as he is for a kind of physical 
114 



Built Without Hands 

immortality, the fruit and diadem of 
nature, should share in nature's joy and 
faith. 

The ideal man approximates to the Man's 

1 TD 1 • L • 1 grace like 

supernal rJeauty, his bearing and per- the arrow. 
sonality respond to the conception of 
God. His grace is like the arrow that 
may be shot any distance according to the 
strength of the bow; the idea expressed in 
the human figure is capable of infinite 
enlargement. The body should be de- 
veloped and exalted by every possible 
means; it is a sacred obligation; nature 
urges us onward, saying, '' Come and let us 
claim our inheritance.'' It is certain that 
all diseases are preventable, or if not im- 
mediately because of a strength of hered- 
ity, they can be so weakened as to do 
little harm. Tt is certain that the ideal 
figure is attainable in a few generations of 
persistent wholesome and intelligent living. 
All are capable of happiness and beauty as 
truly as the thrush or the goldenrod. There 
is scarcely any limit to physical strength, as 
IIS 



The Balanced Life 

proven by the amazing performances of 
our great athletes. The trained muscles 
will snap steel bars as though they were 
pipe-stems. Modern men are capable 
of all that Ajax, all that Hercules did. 
/ It is a religious obligation laid upon us 
to be strong and comely. Each day we 
should take some step toward the per- 
fection of the race. / 
Life It is certain that Hfe may be lengthened 

lengthened. . i i n • 

to a pomt not now ever reached. Scien- 
tists have searched the whole animal king- 
dom and have discovered that normal life 
covers five times its period of coming to 
maturity. In this category man, full- 
grown at twenty, has a golden mean of one 
hundred years. His mid-course is now 
something over thirty. There is little 
doubt that the century line is the easy step, 
and is even now by some greatly tran- 
scended. In our land we have recorded 
instances where life has gone healthily on 
to a century and a half. There is no real 
necessity for premature death; and age, 
ii6 



Built Without Hands 

without decrepitude or pain, should arrive 
Hke the ripe apple upon the autumnal 
bough. Life may easily be prolonged far 
beyond the present term, for the curtain 
is now rung down in the mid-drama. 
Most of us are cut off untimely by the 
sins and blunders of our ancestors; our 
bodies are full of hidden dangers passed 
down the current of a thousand genera- 
tions, the seeds of every malady latent 
within us, waiting for propitious conditions 
of growth. 

The indomitable affirmation of the^^^^}^ 

may be 

good and the true would not only hin- halted. 
der them, but in time rout them 
altogether. We of this age are preparing 
a legacy for unborn posterity. By a 
united and enthusiastic effort of society 
death may be halted and the sources of 
disease destroyed. The summoned life 
of God will drive out every susceptivity 
and rear the ideal individual into the ideal 
race in which there shall be no crying, nor 
tears, nor pain any more, for the former 
117 



The Balanced Life 

things have passed away. The men of 
today should make their contribution of 
health, which will be added to that of the 
next generation, they, in turn, carrying 
life a little higher, so widening and deepen- 
ing it until it fills the earth. The will of 
God demands a Kingdom of Heaven upon 
the earth; anything less than a perfect 
and happy world will miss His intent for us. 
^?|^ ^d^^ Let us roll back the tide of deformity, 
disease, and death; we can be delivered 
only through strong and comm.on effort. 
He who will make no effort to save others, 
himself is not worth saving; the good 
Lord cooperates with us; otherwise He 
cannot help us. He flings society into the 
waters of Life, but gives it hands and 
feet. We must find our way back to 
health and content by a resumption of the 
conditions of innocence and faith which 
He freely gave us, and which we seem 
to have either lost or cast away. A daily 
increasing number are beginning to com- 
prehend Ahat the power of salvation is 
ii8 



Built Without Hands 

getting back to normal life, the return to 
elemental living, to the great rudiments 
which bring with them the peace and 
power of the Divine Life. 



119 



Chapter VI 

The Highway of the Spirit 

" Some natures catch no plagues." — Elizabeth Bar- 
rett Browning. 

Living^ AID Socrates, "A man is a heavenly 
above. \<D tree growing with his roots, which 
is his head, upwards/' The philosopher 
had discovered the sources of the intellect 
grounded in the heavens. Man, unlike 
the plant, lives directly from above. 
Later it was seen that the intellect, through 
the brain as an instrument and medium, 
creates the physical body. With its 
streaming, radiating threads it carries 
the mind to every distant place, and by an 
immanent living touch performs a daily 
miracle. The brain is really the man, 
for where it is not, the man is not. Put 
down anywhere on the surface of the body 
the finest point and you will touch the 
120 



The Highway of the Spirit 

brain; for the nerves are but an extension 
of that wonderful organ. As the highway 
of the spirit it bears man to every portion 
of his bodily domain. The brain in its 
numerous outreachings becomes the track 
of the spirit. There is no instrument so 
fine that when passed into the body can 
escape a nerve. We are actually a radiat- 
ing brain penetrated to the bones and 
marrow by these remarkable rays of flesh. 
And this is the human battery that draws 
down the thought of God moving and 
humanizing the globe. 

Ideas! What mystic things they are! Winged 

^T^, .,..,,. , . individuality. 

1 hey are mdividuality on the wmg. 
They come from unseen places, swifter 
than computation, along wireless paths. 
They brood over us like a mother and 
breathe love upon our brow; they touch 
us with fraternal hands and gaze through 
deep-souled eyes. Ideas are spirits of 
thought and always have behind them a 
personality; there is no such thing as 
abstract thought. Behind every thought 

121 



The Balanced Life 

sits the thinker as absolutely as the oper- 
ator behind the wire over which the message 
flies. We are communing with immortals 
when we entertain angelic ideas. They 
shape and inspire us, we are drawn toward 
them with gentle lure as flame is drawn to 
flame. They approximate the height of 
God; for He must be higher than the 
highest and purest thought he has given to 
the best of men. The noblest conceptions 
are therefore His best measure. He is, of 
course, infinitely above them, yet they 
reach up nearest to His stature. The 
truest human portraiture of God is man's 
purest thought of Him. 
^nh^ The immense range and vigor of the 
intellect, intellect is just dawning on the age. Its 
almost omnipotent resources have hitherto 
escaped realization, and there are new 
worlds awaiting the coming of some mental 
Columbus. A measureless sea upon which 
the barks of thought have scarcely ventured 
is opening to the vision. The fact that we 
can perceive the Infinite takes us out of the 

122 



The Highway of the Spirit 

category of limitation. We have explored 
the Titanic orbs of the sky and measured 
the heavens as easily as the land. The 
mind burns like a torch flaming w^ith the 
lustre of stars, and new adventures not set 
down in our psychologies are calling to us. 
Lord of this inner realm, its borders may 
be widened to touch the illimitable. We 
may populate our minds with beautiful 
thoughts and open their gates to high 
inspirations — to the very breath and pros- 
pect of heaven. It is the immediate 
privilege of every one to accept truth, yield 
it reverent homage, and permit its light 
to dispel the darkness. 

Because the purest thoughts are nearest Exhilaration 
God they must be most tonic and help- thinking. 
ful. What we name inspiration must 
be a clearer, profounder insight into the 
heart of truth. We sometimes criticize 
the flights of the mystics and call them 
impractical; but, as the air is more 
ethereal on the summits of mountains, 
we shall discover that they have only 
123 



The Balanced Life 

been living on healthier and saner altitudes/ 
The closer we get to God, the nearer we 
shall come to what is domestic, dear, 
parental, and lucid. The exhilaration of 
high thinking proves this; the breath of 
strength and sight that comes with it tells 
us we are in our native atmosphere. It is 
like the water of mountain springs. 
'^^^h^^^kh^ Wisdom is the mind's health and poise; 
as love is the health of the heart. Wisdom 
is to the mind what proportion is to the 
body; it is that wholesome quality which 
lends thought sanity and music, as the 
wood and strings of some priceless Stradi- 
varius are made to sound divinely under the 
hand of the master. It is as evasive and 
uninterpretable as the breath of the Lord, 
and, like the sweetness of the summer day, 
is something to be experienced rather than 
defined. It is not learning, nor is it 
knowledge; but just wisdom past compre- 
hending, shining in the hearts of humble 
folk and little children. It is a psychologic 
peace imbued with cheerfulness and 
124 



The Highway of the Spirit 

strength, a sort of effluence of mental 
bloom. It breathes a holy impartiality, 
having found that golden mean where 
error and excess are purged away. 
" If we will only live humbly, thinking Thinking 
the Lord's thoughts after Him, we shall thoughts. 
keep well and joyful. That our sorely 
stricken minds have survived the deluge of 
filth and falsehood flooding all the myriad 
delicate cells is by the mercy of God. It is 
more wonderful than that the body has 
weathered the enormous abuses heaped 
upon it through countless generations. 
Its ineffable chords, tangled, snapped, and 
smitten, may yet be straightened and strung 
to the old music. The rehabilitating 
power of man is amazing. 

/As we come more and more into unity Live in 
with truth our thinking finds the grooves 
in which the Lord's mind travels and be- 
comes steadfast and glad. And in the 
exact ratio that we vary from His way 
we become perturbed and depressed. -' We 
say to those who would be well in body, 
125 



The Balanced Life 

"'Live in the open, seek the sunshine and 
the air, drink from the spring that filters 
through the hill, give the body action and 
relaxation, and all will be well." That 
simple sobriety and peace within the reach 
of nearly all is the medicine for our ills. 
Therefore give the mind the fair illumina- 
tion of truths, and the ardency of love. 
Give it free way, releasing it from the cel- 
lars and sewers where it breathes hard. 
Plague of Press to its lips the chalice of sweet, 
press, strong thoughts. Read the writings of 
the great spirits; let the imagination rise 
and rest upon the bosom of the Lord. 
^The plague of the yellow press holds 
millions of minds in prison cells of 
thinking that is as hurtful as the miasms 
of swamps. The cure is a return to the 
literature of sincerity and love. It is like 
the rush of health to the body of some wan 
prisoner set free in the summer fields of 
light and fragrance. Give the mind pure 
food, repose, and variety, the great sim- 
plicities at hand, and it will live. The 
126 



The Highway of the Spirit 

classic masterpieces which we know as 
poetry, painting, and sculpture must have 
been the flower of wholesome minds in 
close contact with the Infinite Beauty. 

Mental poise carries in its very con-^^?^^^^ 

^ -^ poise. 

stitution the elements of peace, gladness, 
and power. It is deep-founded, roomy, 
and discerning, with a purpose lofty and 
buoyant as the flame. It calms the fe- 
vered thought and is among the turbulent 
a gift from heaven. The steadfast, lam- 
bent spirit is like some gentle majesty of 
nature, or some beauty of the earth and 
sky; and aff^ects us as the unwavering 
orb, the stately lily, or trees arching 
some silent pathway. On the other 
hand, precipitancy and flurry diminish 
confidence and give the feeling of 
deficient vitality. The consciously weak 
dash impotently at things, as a feeble horse 
with a load takes a hill. ' If we are God's, 
holding in embryo His attributes, then we 
natively possess the elements of all power." 
The mind of man, as He made it, is the 
127 



The Balanced Life 

mind of God in litde, and if ineffectual and 
joyless there must have been some breach 
of nature. 
Perpetual j^-g normal condition is one of divine 

victory. 

repose and energy. No sublimity of 
planet or mountain can excel the deep 
tranquillity of an ordered mind. It is 
perpetual victory celebrated, not by shouts 
of gladness, or boisterous ebulitions, but 
by peace, w^hich is joy permanent and 
habitual, like the fixed glory of a star. It 
is conquest over all difficulties, even the 
bitterest sorrov^s. In the burden and 
heat of the day, with shouts of competition 
in the air, we recall the ideal of the morn- 
ing and are glad it has not been lowered. 
When we can realize that the mind of God 
is ours, that all its priceless stores are im- 
mediately accessible, we shall become 
steady victors. Thought, wide open to the 
Lord, is ensphered and brooded by love, 
like flowers under the happy sky. We 
ought to rid ourselves of a habitual and 
persistent feeling that this condition is not 



The Highway of the Spirit 

ours by inheritance, and that we must beg 
for it, or acquire it by some earnest form- 
ula of beHef. Like the air, it is ours 
constitutionally, and we need only to take 
its long breaths into our life. As the new- 
born infant takes its first inhalation of the 
atmospheric sea in which it is bathed, let 
us open our being and live again. We 
may assume that all good is ours and 
call confidently for it. 

Outwardly and superficially speaking We can 
we must take what comes; the circum- 
stances of this day and tomorrow, the 
places, persons, and events, we must meet 
and there is no escape, — but in the central 
world of thought the reverse is true, there 
we are imperial and can choose. Lords 
of this deep realm, we may think what we 
will, we may close our doors or fling them 
wide apart. We may command the pure 
and sweet, the grandest that the heavens 
aff'ord. So holding the reins we may 
guide the life along the ways of joy; we 
may bit and bridle our motley savages, 
9 129 



The Balanced Life 

turning their wild and crude energies into 
ways of use. It is possible to keep calm 
in the earthquake of passion; to break 
the fierce colts of impulse and ride them 
to the goal of a good purpose. Our 
weaknesses lie inurned in the places of our 
strength. It is surprising what can be 
done in a single day when the will is fully 
enlisted. 
An Students of heredity tell us that it 

ccession , , . , 

of love, takes several years to tram the con- 
genital stridency out of a voice. But an 
accession of love in the soul, some great 
trial or softening experience, will do it in a 
week. In the heart of the cyclone is a cen- 
ter called ''the eye of peace '^ that moves 
with the whirling terror. There, is eternal 
calm, the peace of a summer hour, while 
around and about it turn the awful wheels 
of destruction. The heart of man in the 
labyrinth of social and business life may 
cherish the secret peace. He may tread 
the ways of hindrance and calamity as 
Jesus walked the angry sea at midnight. 
130 



The Highway of the Spirit 

The day ends and darkness settles about 
him, but the Hghts of the sanctified in- 
tellect dispel its blackness. 

Mental wholeness and proportion re-^^ntal 
suit in joyful and lucid thinking. The 
balanced mind does not know everything 
in detail, but it knows in wholes. The 
heaven-kissed city sits in plain view on the 
heights, and although we can not count its 
towers, we mark well its symmetry. The 
minutiae of the universe we do not see, nor 
every square inch of the landscape; but 
the mapping is perfect and plain. It is 
possible to follow the river up all its tribu- 
taries and find its springs, yet not inspect 
every foot of territory that it bounds and 
drains. There are tangles of wilderness, 
clumps of underbrush, and untraveled alti- 
tudes, but its perfect whole lies like a gem 
in the eye. 

Goodwill and purpose make for insight; What 

P , , / I makes for 

as one finds best the way to the sea by insight. 
embarking on the bosom of a river. 
When the outline of the body is drawn and 
131 



The Balanced Life 

Its main organs situated, there is clearness, 
a sense of refreshment as though we under- 
stood. The bones, the arteries, the ner- 
vous system, the prime functions of Hfe 
standing forth to view, give us a pleasing 
conception of its unity, and we perceive it 
quickly, as one sees a breadth of sea or sky 
through a minute embrasure. But we 
shall never perhaps know all the com- 
plex, infinitesimal structure, because it is 
simply incomprehensible. Detail is a mat- 
ter of millennial study, and even then we 
stand upon its boundaries. 
Organizing This is what I mean by the affirmative 

one s , ... 

thought, mmd organizing its thought. The alert 
and hopeful purpose brings large schemes 
into simple arrangement. Let us once hold 
earnestly in mind a high resolve, a coveted 
result, and the entire individuality centers 
that way. The carrier pigeon rises in air, 
turns its feathered prow homeward, and 
with the swiftness of an arrow seeks its 
cote. We start for a day's outing on the 
hills, and instantly every sense unites into a 
132 



The Highway of the Spirit 

single purpose and all are perfectly joined. 
Mind, heart, eyes, feet, blood, and nerves 
are interested. Thought poises the whole 
man towards its own interest, we are built 
up and unified by its light and power. 
So very much depends upon what we 
would be, and strive to be. If we aim to 
be a man, a woman, our whole constitution 
absorbs the idea,and the result is reached in 
every inch of us; for the man who is 
worthy of the name thinks as he is. If he 
thinks one way and lives another, his 
thought is no part of himself; it is too 
superficial to affect him, and it will be dis- 
covered that beneath the surface in the 
profound deeps of himself he thinks as he 
is. V He is unrevealing in his words and 
we must take no account of them; we 
must read him in his actions or he is an 
incoherency. ^ 

He whose thought is not one with his life Thought 
is like those creatures that travel in any life, 
direction with equal facility and seem to 
have eyes in every section of their frames. 
^33 



The Balanced Life 

But when he purposes to be a man, and 
thinks as he is, dual thinking vanishes. 
Our mental conflicts and entanglements 
always arise just here; we are play- 
ing with theories that lie outside the 
pale of our purpose. There is a miserable 
condition of conflict between thought and 
intent; and there is no condition so clarify- 
ing and invigorating as a high purpose to 
which everything in us points and travels. 
Our entire being assumes intelligent re- 
solve and clusters about that resolve like 
the particles of a crystal about its center. 
It reminds us of those old folk-songs, un- 
fathomable and deathless, which seem to 
have arisen out of the hearts of the people, 
and which give the bugle call to all fond 
recollections. 
disco^? Now that we have simplicity and unity, 
ourselves, we discover ourselves. Every note of 
us beats to this music and we become a 
symphony of life wherein the material and 
spiritual join with pure harmony. We 
can recall our past, climb to its hill-tops, 
134 



The Highway of the Spirit 

throw our vision over its ranges, and note 
the integrity of its hopes and deeds. We 
can see how from the very first, instinctively 
but unreaHzingly, we were journeying to 
a country whose borders we now behold. 
We can handle the silver thread that binds 
in sequence all the periods of our life from 
that invisible world out of which we came 
to the invisible into which we shall again 
disappear. 

Here is the measurement of a life — has 'The *est 

of life. 

there been unity and purpose in it .? Has . 
one holy resolve thrilled it, one idea 
irradiated it ^ If we are bewildered, let 
us pause and apply this test, put this preg- 
nant proposition to our spirits. ^Some 
lives run all breathless, pausing not, and to 
little purpose. Time and strength are saved 
by a serene inventory and summary; we 
should sometimes sit on the banks of our 
river and watch it flow by. Contemplation 
clears the stream and comforts the mind 
which by its very structure insists upon 
the simplicity of unity. Then personal 
135 



The Balanced Life 

bias, mean prejudice, and trifling detail fall 
away ; the runner in his eagerness casts off all 
superfluous garments, as efi^ete substances 
drop from new and shooting growths. 
Every theory that does not cohere with the 
life we should reject as dangerous; let the 
dust of our chariot wheels settle again to its 
native dust. From the beginning of the 
world it has been diflficult to think clearly; 
right thinking has been rare always from 
this very lack of purpose. ''If any man 
will do His will he shall know of the teach- 
ing.'" Mental aimlessness leads inevitably 
to bewilderment and logical perturbation of 
the whole man. A high, clean purpose is 
the clarion call summoning thought to con- 
centration and system, as the life of the seed 
summons the air, soil, sunlight, and water 
to the unity of the rose. The greatness of 
the greatest man consists only in this — that 
he has a divine purpose and has trained 
his eyes to see every ray of precious light. ' 
The mould- ^he mouldiup; power of thought on the 

ing power . . . . 

of thought, will emphasizes the importance of right 

136 



The Highway of the Spirit 

thinking. Thinking frequently creates cir- 
cumstances and even alters environment; 
it will change the chemical effects of the 
atmosphere on the body and cause the eye 
to see demons v^here are actually angels. 
When thought is healthy all things are 
beautiful and good. To the aberrant 
mind the summer day breathes poison; 
for thought, being mental sight and sense, 
receives according to its quality. When 
it is right, all is right, and we see as 
things really are, for all that is, is good 
and divine. Thought of a certain qual- 
ity will illuminate the flesh as though 
it were a transparent vase, causing it to 
glow with ardor in the chill of a win- 
ter day. Watch the face and see thought 
flit across its surface like the shadows 
of clouds over the fields, brightening 
and darkening according to the mood. 
We may read the fine shading of an idea 
in the eyes, the indefinable transformation 
of expression, as we read a book. The 
mind of Christ made His body to glow, 
137 



The Balanced Life 

illuminating the spurs of Harmon with its 
whiteness and smiting down the guards 
at the sepulchre. And in our ratio of 
power we may have the same transforming 
influence. 
Certain There is no question about the medic- 

mcantations. ^ ... 

inal value of right thinking on ourselves 
and our fellows. Says Socrates, ^'The 
Soul is cured of its maladies by certain 
incantations, and those incantations are 
beautiful reasonings from which temper- 
ance is generated in the soul." We know 
well how great inspirations lift us high 
above sensualities, out of the domination 
of mere animal impulses. We are "in the 
spirit,'' and the body is hushed into a unan- 
imity that enables us to forget it. True har- 
mony is peace, such a perfect fusing of the 
triple personality that it makes one music. 
Thought, immediately eff'ective through 
such a sane and willing medium as the 
body, is a tonic and disinfectant pressing 
with electric healing into cell and tissue. 
It is more easily summoned than the doctor, 
138 



The Highway of the Spirit 

and acts unerringly and without the bewil- 
derment of diagnosis. Just as it is possible 
under the stimulus of a dash of enthusiasm 
to do without effort things that to the in- 
different spirit would be out of the question, 
the affirmative mind, blind to hindrances 
and fears, goes happily on its way. The 
Hebrews sang hymns of peace in the 
sevenfold fury of the Babylonian fire and 
came forth as sweet and whole as from 
a garden of roses. Thus we may move 
among the diseased and dangerous forti- 
fied by our thought. If a single regenerat- 
ing sentence will start the blood whirling 
through the arteries with intensified speed, 
purging every veinlet and bearing away 
the particles of death, what will not the 
united power of all divine beliefs do 
for us.? Surely, ''Life is ever lord of 
death." 

Let us gird ourselves with purifyinp; and ^^^ ^^ g^^^ 

, ., . . ^ o ourselves. 

energizing sentiments. Said Herder, the 

German philosopher, when near death, 

"Give me a great thought on which to 

139 



The Balanced Life 

die." A sentence falls occasionally into 
our hearts like the voice of the Master 
into the grave of Lazarus. The realms 
of life and death lie within the paren- 
thesis of our thinking. If the warrior 
watches that his sword is not bent or 
rusted, how should we give heed to our 
thoughts! The angels deployed to wipe 
away humanity's tears are the incarnation 
of our most beautiful thoughts standing at 
our doors ready to enter with their peace. 
The heavens brood above the saddest and 
most desperate, ready to break into the 
music of hope and repeat again the song 
above the hills of Bethlehem. Good 
thoughts are the presences of good souls, 
and God's thoughts are God with us. 
Quick The Sanskrit rightly names man, MNA, 

effect of . fe / ^ > 

thought, the Thinker. Wherever we are and in 
whatsoever straits, we may regale the mind 
with the wine of beautiful reasonings; on 
the bed of pain or in the ranks of toil we 
may be visited by all sweet and gracious 
powers. No bars of earth or hell can keep 
140 



The Highway of the Spirit 

them out. If we only knew our privileges 
we should never be without a feeling of 
pure peace; we should never complain, 
never be unhappy, and never sin. The 
calm, bracing joys of eternity would per- 
vade us even amid the round of the menial 
and trivial. We do not yet comprehend 
the quick effects set trembling by the 
thoughts we shelter; that misgivings, 
doubts, prophecies, golden hopes, are the 
springing up of these intellectual germs 
from the deep soil of the mind. We 
are fearful and apprehensive because 
we have permitted our fancies to play 
tricks with us; certain ponderings rob us 
of courage and vitality as surely as the 
lance draws the life-blood. Anxiety, bit- 
terness, and general infelicity are the 
furrows left by the sharp ploughshare of 
false cerebration. 

To redeem and illuminate life by whole- ^^,^tJ^^^^ 

J and heart 

some thought is the work of divine men of God. 
and women everywhere. To set light 
flashing that will bring the dawn of spring 
141 



The Balanced Life 

to men's minds is the vocation of the sun 
of the soul, the ready and cogent privilege 
of all who can think at all; for good 
thought is the magic that transforms at its 
threshold the vestments of grief. Even the 
least can perform almost the incredible, 
for the Lord flows through him to others. 
He can be the hand and heart of God to 
needy men. Power starts in minute and 
sometimes undiscoverable ways, like those 
thread-like, silver streams born on the hills 
which broaden and deepen until they bless 
the land and the sea. The cottage rush- 
light outshines for some poor traveler the 
star in the sky. And yet what a very great 
thing it is to inspirit a single home! 
Thought Yhe doctor's presence is often more efl5- 

better than . i • i 

drugs, cacious than his drugs; his confidence and 
buoyancy start the fountain of health to 
playing before the medicine has been swal- 
lowed. We may become our own healers, 
prescribing thought, awakening the torpid 
forces of health by a single truth held stead- 
ily and believingly. The child in the street, 
142 



The Highway of the Spirit 

transported with young innocence, too glad 
almost to live, may be robbed of it all by a 
word or look of rebuke, and its tears may 
be soon dried by smiles. Even the dog 
droops in every line of his frame at a 
tone of disparagement. I have wondered 
whether the fine computation of forces and 
effects possible in these wonderful days 
will at last come to reckon the potencies 
concealed in the embrace of a single great 
idea. The mental Might that reared the 
universe, decking it with loveliness and 
laughter, an outward reflection of the 
Divine Mind, certainly cast the counter- 
part in the mind of man; it is an image 
and likeness of His Own. 

Reason is an agp-ressive and creative ^^^^T 

c>o must be 

enerp-y that must be reckoned with in the reckoned 

^•^ . . . with. 

restoration of the social desolation. To 
possess illuminating and regenerating ideas 
and hide them within the breast is the inde- 
fensible sin. What may be the power of 
the mind that uprears architectures and 
bridges chasms over disease, deformity, and 
143 



The Balanced Life 

mental blight ? The highest function of 
thought is the diffusion of health and hap- 
piness. I believe the end of the creation, 
and the supreme wish of God, is a heaven 
of beautiful and glad souls, and I believe 
He desires all to join that company. One 
dispiriting word does more than chill; it is 
a derelict afloat, a dagger-thrust at the 
divine scheme. Every bright word, like 
every pleasant air of music, is pleasure in 
action, it is virtue and goodness at play. 
The soul nearest us catches the con- 
tagion and goes its rejoicing way; and it is 
our privilege to send as many thus away 
as possible. 
Laws Do not call him frivolous and un- 

within ^ 1 . 1 

laws, feeling who conquers the atmosphere 
of anxiety that pervades a stricken home, 
and at the same time the preoccupa- 
tions and fears that seek to possess his own 
mind. He realizes the situation, but dis- 
covers a stronger principle which, pitted 
against grief and doubt, annuls them. 
Gravitation is a condition not to be argued 
144 



The Highway of the Spirit 

away; but growth, without destroying, 
makes gravitation for itself ineffective. 
How confidently the rose tosses its crest in 
air, defying yet bowing in graceful rever- 
ence to the all-pervading law. Calamity 
may be overcome by a faith transcending 
that which would draw it earthward. 
There are laws within laws, centripetal 
and centrifugal forces of spirit and body, 
myriad slumbering gifts that balance one 
another, which, when in equable action, 
pluck the sting from the wound and drive 
away the shadow. This is the secret of 
high hearts that seem scarcely human, so 
unconcerned are they about the trivial 
matters that the world in general can not 
bear. They behold enlargements of life 
through whose embrasures they quickly 
enter. There are no evils that do not lie 
easily within the inclosure of God^s best 
love for us and which do not offer spiritual 
escape into happier fields. The very 
darknesses are a portion of the vast har- 
mony so vaguely and dimly apprehended 
lo 145 



The Balanced Life 

by us. Through the vale of grief and 
doubt we draw near the city of God. 
A new ^ j^g^ Hterary flora is arisinp; that is to be 

literary -^ ^ 

flora, the food of the future. Men will collect, 
as in the past, in great assembhes for the 
electric touch of fellowship, and oral 
interchange of ideas; but the contact of 
mind with mind is to come largely in the 
future through the printed page and the 
silent, invisible messages of telepathy. 
The mind of the world is to become one 
vast audience sitting where times and 
places have no bearing. Redeeming 
thought, hastening along highways made 
without hands, will weave the globe with 
joy, dropping into mansion and cottage 
as the stars fall to earth. Hearts are seek- 
ing kindred hearts everywhere, each shall 
find its own, and isolation shall pass. 
There is a great spiritual law binding all 
like souls in one company on earth or 
in heaven. Human societies contain the 
principle of the plant which draws, by an 
easy spontaneity, only that which be- 
146 



The Highway of the Spirit 

longs to it. Isolated bodily, it may be, 
we are in spirit with those who are 
like us, and if like angels in heaven, 
then we are in spirit in heaven. The 
meeting of minds through books will bring 
together like aggregations, and these hu- 
man clusters will also find still larger 
unities; as the solar systems are larger 
groupings of star clusters, these in turn 
being gathered into still larger integra- 
tions called constellations. The grouped 
flowers on a single head, like the clover, 
is a lesser illustration. 

It seems certain that psychologic trans- Psychologic 

. . -n r n i "i i i i transmission. 

mission will follow closely on the heels 
of wireless telegraphy, and mental high- 
ways, crowded with couriers bearing mes- 
sages from star to star and from heaven 
to the earths, will travel the interstellar 
spaces. For the present it is largely the 
printed page that holds sway; it must 
perform its use before yielding to some- 
thing finer and higher. Thought, on in- 
credible wing, graved on the white page, 
147 



The Balanced Life 

IS the present general manifestation. The 
book and the wire are doing God's work 
in scattering His own blessed thought 
over the fields of life. At this momen- 
tous hour, when the globe is strung to 
thought, and girdled by it, when the 
presses are swift, and the very auras 
swept by unseen envoys, we ought to 
ask "What soul are we giving it V' "How 
is it freighted, with what quality of thought 
are we lading these infinite carriers .^" 
The new intellectual output is replying 
bravely. 
A new There is a new, strange song in the air, 
and just now, when minds and hearts are 
open, the gospel is near. New truths, like 
new discoveries, wait on the receptive mind. 
/The Lord is ever ready to give. He must 
wait for man.^ He keeps them stored in 
the reservoirs of His will until men are 
ready, and then they fall like the showers. 
The first clear notes herald the day; the 
world of God is about to be bathed in a 
revelation that will uplift its entire life 
148 



The Highway of the Spirit 

and thought. We talk of the physical 
forces of the planet still latent and undis- 
covered; but this new might of mind 
will conquer all difficulties and cure all 
ills. The intuitions of men everywhere 
are starting up as from a dream to greet 
the proffered gift. Each new victory is 
quickening faith, and the day must dawn. 
God's coming is like a slowly bright- 
ening orb showing itself at last as a sun 
of the first splendor. 

If it has taken so long to make'^he 



whole 



world 



electricity useful and practical, if its revel- awakening. 
ation has been so tardy and trying, 
what shall we expect of something in- 
finitely vaster and finer ^ And now 
that the whole world is awakening to 
the transforming nature of right thinking, 
the medium and facility for its trans- 
mission is ready. The literature of doubt 
is dead and the pessimist gets no hearing; 
only books of hope can find readers. We 
want our reading to give us strength and 
joy. The older sciences, missing the soul 
149 



The Balanced Life 

of matter, gave us a dead world and a 
dead God — with, however, some useful 
contribution and some sincere work; 
but the men of today, who are telling 
us about the universe, know it is the 
living garment of the Lord, charged with 
His personality; they have reverently 
touched its hem and received virtue. 
A new and throbbing science is here, 
totally different from two score years 
ago, and the victory of thought is entering 
upon a career whose magnitude and 
beneficence is beyond augury. 



ISO 



Chapter VII 

The Central Melody 

"The irresistible, sound, wholesome heart 
O' the hero . . . drove back, dried up sorrow at its 
source." — Robert Browning. 

THE faculties must march abreast if The 
,.p . I . . . . faculties 

life IS to make its requisite music, abreast. 

An undue development of the intellect is 
irregular, making for deformity and mis- 
chief. Life is not wisdom alone; it is 
also affection, and to do good service 
both must be based in sound, sweet flesh. 
Intellect all alone is inert; life with its 
fires drawn — love is its power, the red 
energy that makes the mind effective. 
After all that has been said of the broad- 
ening influence of ideas, the capacity of 
education to build a man and a nation, 
it remains true that they could not have 
the slightest weight if they were not mel- 
lowed and driven by feeling. The book, 
151 



The Balanced Life 

speech, poem or song without heart can 
no more arouse and touch than the street 
light can make the surrounding trees bud 
and blossom. No purely intellectual man 
or woman has given society moral impetus, 
or left a reputation for genuine greatness. 
They may have been dazzling, but not 
influencing, leaving their neighbor, and 
the world, about where they found them. 
Love There have been times among men 
wisdom, when feeling and thought have sought to 
maintain a separate existence. We have 
had the exquisite idea and fine-spun 
theory like faultless sculpture, white, per- 
fect, cold; and we have had love with- 
out wisdom rioting like a bacchante. 
There have been people with beautiful 
conceptions and the utterance of angels, 
whose minds have dwelt in heavenly 
places, but who have been so halting in 
their conduct that they could not sup- 
port a decent morality. Others, whose 
lives have been fragrant with purity 
and love, have thought incoherently and 
152 



The Central Melody 

illogically. The lovers of goodness have 
been in one class, the students of wis- 
dom in another; as if either could exist 
in any reality alone. 
^^Truth v^hen true is full of tenderness, '^^fPOY^^ 

witmn the 

love when real is divinely wise. The bal- radiance. 
ance of these has been so disproportionately 
held that goodness has sometimes been 
spoken of in such a way as to imply weak- 
ness; and reason has been confounded with 
craft and guile. They should mingle with 
the perfection of light and warmth. This 
was the mind of Jesus; His reason was 
so keen that He could cut asunder the 
sophistries of His enemies with a word; 
His love was so magnetic that He drew 
to Him the vilest outcasts. All honor 
to the divine beauty of thought, let us 
crown it with laurels; but let us also 
honor that other beauty born in the pro- 
fundities of human emotion, let us gather 
up the wealth of the heart in the trans- 
parent vase of the mind; it is the power 
within the radiance. 
153 



The Balanced Life 
Love Xhe priority of mind or heart has taxed 

IS first. . . 

the ingenuity of world logicians; but if 
emotion is life it must be first in point of 
fact. There is a difficulty in adjusting so 
impalpable and evasive a thing as spirit 
and mind. Cast the new and fragrant 
plant in the retort of the chemist and at- 
tempt to decide by analysis the primacy 
of its complicated charms and you have 
left a pitiful residue of ashes. Weigh the 
light and heat in the balance and you get 
no priority, take one from the other and 
there is night. We know that love is first, 
for God is Love, and yet love is naught 
without its tempering wisdom. We feel 
the supremacy of love and its commanding 
relation, believing all difficulty may be 
solved by it, that it holds in solution the 
secret of living. We know, too, that we 
continue to live when we do not compre- 
hend; the heart beats pending an attempt 
to understand. Life is thus before thought, 
for without it thought is dead. When we 
fail to understand, to untangle the skein of 
IS4 



The Central Melody 

sophistry, we may fall back on the ele- 
mental act of living; we may express the 
creed of heaven in practical works, its 
most clear and eloquent vehicle. Life is a 
vital and total act, while thought is always 
partial and theoretical. We may permit 
the sweetness of truth to operate in our 
faces and affairs. When we do the truth- 
ful deed, heavenly melodies play through 
our souls. 

/ Faith is not wholly a matter of Acceptance 
thought; on the contrary, it is the life's incompre- 

c ^ ' 1 Ml • 1 hensible. 

acceptance or the mcomprehensible with- 
out any definite proofs.' We have faith in 
God, but He is beyond our understanding; 
the babe trusts its mother, of whose mar- 
vellous personality it has virtually no com- 
prehension. Faith is not a hope; it is 
far more, it is hope's fruition, love and 
confidence having lent it certitude. That 
mystic and unutterable something we 
name faith transcends hope. Hope is 
wavering, and denotes in its very etymol- 
ogy incompleteness; faith holds the life 
155 



The Balanced Life 

true and keeps it calm and sweet when 
arbitrary theories are dying and the con- 
ventional structure of belief is in wreck. 
Occasionally inherited beliefs have gone 
down before the investigation of wisdom, 
and faith has been strong enough to bridge 
the incomprehensible. When we come 
to think for ourselves, and are drifting 
from the ancient ways blazed by our 
fathers through the wilderness of the 
incomprehensible, we should have built 
up within us a conviction in the good- 
ness of God and His world, undaunted 
by the paradoxical or even illogical. 
Recovering ^j^^ tendency to depreciate the inner 

simplicity ^ -f ^ 

and heart, life, to act as though inspiration had 
ceased, to ignore faith and its dear joys, 
is lessening. Does God no longer haunt 
our silent fervors and pour His love 
through our variant works 1 We are 
recovering simplicity and unction, be- 
ginning to believe in the preeminence 
of the moral over every other force, to 
tremble beneath the weight of our ma- 
156 



The Central Melody 

terialism. It is a sign of the times that 
in a period Hke ours, when love and 
justice have been low, that our hearts 
catch themselves quickening at their 
very names. We are beginning to realize 
that a right heart gives harmony to the 
whole being; as the plant gets its unity 
and beauty from the precious substances 
packed deep at its core. What we see 
with the eyes must be the outflowering 
of an inner quality. 

Plato says that rhythm sleeps in the Rhythm 

sleeps in 

deeps of the soul; which is merely saying the soul. 
that the determining factor of the outer 
life lies pregnant there. The Greeks' god 
of music was also their god of righteous- 
ness. Music rises aloft above the com- 
prehensible into the kingdom of mystery; 
yet we are each at home with it, and 
through its offices each heart gets its in- 
dividual message. There is an inefface- 
able tie binding melody and the affec- 
tional nature in one pure strain, the chords 
of each responding with quick joy. The 
157 



The Balanced Life 

breast loves it with the same native emo- 
tion as the bird the air. What makes 
for grace, kindHness, and repose is unseen 
and intangible. What is right is v^hat 
the central self instinctively loves, and 
what is wrong is that from which it 
instinctively recoils. We are so finely 
keyed to the infinite that w^e feel the least 
jar of dissonance. A beautiful life is the 
certain eflfluence of a beautiful heart. 
Spend Conserve, then, the central melody, for 
spirit.it is that which makes us what we are. 
True thrift is to spend lavishly for the 
spirit, to m.ake the daily expense for the 
everlasting. Millinery is admissible when 
it fits and expounds the soul and the body, 
but a vile body clad in purity, an empty 
brain diademed with gold, are the height 
of irrelevance. When we are right in 
our loves we are parallel with the whole 
work of God; then we are related to Na- 
ture, which is a splendid flowering of a 
central grace. We see men undergoing 
transmutations that make them new crea- 
158 



The Central Melody 

tures through the power of a hidden virtue, 
the entire world modulated and glorified 
by their other way of feeling. Is there a 
blotch on your universe, an obscurity, a 
gloom anywhere ? be sure it is an image 
reflected from some inner condition. That 
the central and essential commands, is a 
tenet never violated in creation. We 
are reminded by those frequent stirrings 
of the sap of kindly feeling that our good- 
ness is trying to get the rule whenever 
it seems to have the slightest opportunity. 

The ability to see clearly, to think cor- Vision 
rectly, is the matter of a sound inner life, heart. 
We can not command veracity by a nod; 
we must possess it, and it us; it must 
be a portion of our tissue if it is to re- 
port in our demeanor. Diplomacy and 
truth have little in common, and the 
story will be coherent if the life is guile- 
less. The hero fears not that if he with- 
holds the avowal of his deed it will go 
unheralded and unrecognized; the deed 
is himself wrought in each action, speak- 
159 



The Balanced Life 

ing in each feature. The heroic enspheres 
him, is an aureole about him seen by 
the souls where he moves. It covers 
him with the beauty of a celestial mantle 
distinguishing him from others. Even 
a cornmonplace figure and features, per- 
meated by the heroic, wear the aspect 
of immortality. Moral joys are pro- 
founder far than intellectual; there is a 
happy consciousness that we possess deep 
within us a loveliness known to God 
whence arise holy impulse, enthusiasm, 
the renewal of courage, and powerful 
incentives to right action. The kingdom 
of love is, above all, the kingdom of 
bravery and cheer. 
The heart J must revert ap-ain to the peculiar 

easily ac- , , ® * ^ 

complishes. ease with which the heart accomplishes. 
Goodness, like life at the core of nature, 
is elemental, achieving with the bright- 
ness and cogency of nature. It is, so to 
speak, in the spiritual blood of man and 
can not be repressed. Virtue is the ad- 
herence in action to the nature of things 
1 60 



The Central Melody 

pressing up underneath humanity with 
unconquerable vigor. It is not an ac- 
quirement, it is an aboriginal possession. 
The whole life lends itself eagerly to a 
fundamental human tendency, and the 
healthy physical affords a platform upon 
which its higher interests may meet. 
Faith may no longer be thought of as a 
literary formula of belief; it is something 
resident, and to be tabulated among the 
phenomena of nature. There is a science 
of goodness and joy as exact as that of 
chemistry. Our faith, if a true one, is 
of personal substance; character is nature 
rising into finer regions, breaking through 
the flesh and seeking spiritual sublima- 
tion in the fair blossom of the human 
plant. There is an intimacy of divinity 
in the very atoms; God immanent every- 
where and always. 

Abandonment to the great Will sleeps Abandon- 

, r • 1 mentto 

at the roots or creation and sways men God. 
and worlds. The happiest are those who 
have learned from the universe the lesson 
II i6i 



The Balanced Life 

of obedient trust, who have discovered 
in their own structure, even to the flesh, 
the divine motion; who know that hoh- 
ness is active and practical assent to the 
laws of body and spirit, following destiny 
with the fidelity and repose of the tree 
and the orb. A faith of this quality rests 
in God and His world. The grass, the 
corn, the beast of the field, exist in calm 
confidence, feeling a firm but unconscious 
sense of security. There is a tacit trust in 
the falling rain, the rustling corn, the 
songful brooks, and the opening day; they 
walk with God, following their common 
life without haste and without unrest. 
Should we who consummate the wide 
creation, in whom all precious things of 
earth and heaven find residence and frui- 
tion, be less loyal and confident than 
these ? Let us try to do voluntarily and 
intelligently what nature does dumbly; let 
us believe in the grand idea of nature 
expressed in her acts, coveting her seren- 
ity and health. 

162 



The Central Melody 

We should lodge our love on the loftiest Th^ 
peak of faith, for even then we shall be solvent. 
standing on the foothills of the ever- 
lasting. Confident love, tempered and 
directed by wisdom, will give us the con- 
tentment and gladness of nature and of 
God. On the pinions of its might it will 
sustain all that is solid and precious in 
the world; from it secret magnetisms will 
incessantly flow. Its hasty glances will 
do more to dissipate prejudice and kindle 
trust than the most elaborate arguments. 
Divine love, the love of the holiest, is an 
universal solvent, melting heart into heart 
and clarifying each. It becomes a stead- 
fast imperishable joy, and the spirit is 
sure of an all-sufficient and unfailing 
nourishment. 

There are natures that bind us over The gift 

. J 1 1 . 1 • 1 .of healing. 

to rectitude by their high expectation. 
That they feel sure of our integrity holds 
us to truth and panoplies us against 
temptation, lifting us from the common 
places to altitudes where nothing base 
163 



The Balanced Life 

can breathe. They have the gift of heal- 
ing, of stiUing the strife of tongues, and 
sweetening the bitter waters. Without 
constraint hearts turn to them Hke flowers 
to the hght. DwelHng high out of the 
region of the mean and vengeful they 
inhale the sweet breath of God. And 
yet, after all, the divine is the normal, the 
common life God gave us, and in regain- 
ing it we simply recover a forfeited con- 
dition. By merely desiring what is good, 
without quite knowing always what it is, 
we become a factor against evil, widening 
the skirts of light, and making the struggle 
with darkness narrower. 
Live The mainspring of life is in the heart, 

from this i • • i i i • i r i 

fair region, and It IS there that the vital forces have 
rise; there dwell also the agencies that 
have made possible the miracle of modern 
industrialism, the fires that have kindled 
patriotism and religion. We feel the 
pulse in all great human creations, and 
through entire nature; beating in the 
veined plant, quivering in the sky, and 
164 



The Central Melody 

boiling in the seas, we detect the sympathy 
of the Infinite. Beneath the transparent 
surfaces of things glow and throb the 
features of Love. Genius takes its rise 
in these provinces, and never was there 
anything great and lasting accomplished 
without it. The impalpable substance, 
the exhaustless source of beauty, the win- 
ning, moving powers of life, are imbedded 
in the heart. We cannot begin to live 
from this fair region without instantly 
rising to a higher plane; a sense of self- 
subordination, of self-mastery, is felt, and 
we are no longer a bundle of jumbled 
impulses lacking purpose and peace. We 
throw ourselves gladly into the sublime 
order, doing with comprehension and pleas- 
ure what the stones and trees do involun- 
tarily. 

Let us keep ourselves pure for the^^ty 
sake of our courage; the pure heart courage. 
goes all the way, the tainted one tires in 
a mile. A single base imagination will 
degrade the action of the heart and clip 
i6s 



The Balanced Life 

the sinews of power; it will even debase 
the animal tissue and rob the nerves of 
their delicate action. This is because 
goodness is distinctly human, proper to 
man, and any lowering of the standard 
is a blow at his unity and integrity — and 
these, unity and integrity, are the indis- 
pensable requisites of courage. 
Confidence Courage is a kind of faith leavening 

and joy. ^ ^ ® 

the whole of the good man's life; he be- 
lieves to his finger-tips and to the soles 
of his feet. He has an invincible reliance 
in God, in himself, and the universe. ' It 
is impossible to obey with nature without 
feeling sure that all is well; it is a kind of 
witness of the Spirit, a reassurance of the 
Lord." He who trusts and rejoices does 
so in the strength of an unwavering con- 
viction that the world is governed by love, 
no matter how contradictory his experi- 
ences may have been. Let us once ac- 
tually believe, and we cease to fear, for we 
know that victory lies with the good, and 
not with the evil. Unqualified confidence 
i66 



The Central Melody 

IS the sole basis of large and joyous living; 
possessing this, we possess all and rest sure. 
Where trust fails, obedience fails also, 
weakening the life. Nothing beautiful 
and permanent, nothing truly human, is 
accomplished without it. 

A kind of glorious predestination has Belief 

- , IT surpasses 

always been necessary to great and undis-hope. 
couraged characters; they have felt that 
their mission was assured and nothing 
could dismay them. They have been sure 
they were implements in the hand of 
Destiny; that He was irresistibly speeding 
on His worlds, with them aboard, to 
"some far-off divine event." Their belief 
has surpassed hope, developing into a 
security that has not faltered. Hope 
always includes the shadow of misgiving; 
it is indeterminate until it becomes full- 
fledged confidence; then it is open-eyed, 
scientific, is based upon an instinct of 
life, considers the tyranny of circum- 
stances, the frailty of human resolution, 
counts on possible temporary discom- 
167 



The Balanced Life 

fiture, reckoning honest defeat as steps 
to final mastery. Said Robert Louis 
Stevenson: ''I believe in the ultimate 
decency of things — ay, and if I awoke in 
hell should still believe in them/' To 
be confident of life is to feel that it is a 
contest in which the palm will eventually 
belong to justice and love. And we do 
not believe because we will to, but because 
we cannot help it; a true life is organized 
and embattled faith in the divine order, 
a faith native to the blood; it is a condition 
of health that amounts to a holy covenant, 
assuring us that somehow, no matter just 
how, the good will succeed; this conviction 
cleaves to the constitution and will not 
down. 
Love Just here is the rise of that mystic and 

more than , , . . . n i 

bread, ranked power settmg m action all the 
better purposes; by it we live much more 
than by the bread we eat. Everything 
that tends to weaken this deep-founded 
trust must be of evil. The future is for 
the clear-sighted and laborious believer. 
i68 



The Central Melody 

Belief engenders love to God, that quick- 
ening love which is the mightiest stimulus 
to toil, and lends dignity to character. 
Let us have the courage to commit our- 
selves to that Powder in whose embrace 
the universe sleeps; it is the essential step, 
the great conclusion. He of little faith 
is also of little accomplishment; he is 
debilitated by his doubt of the stability 
of the universe and the moral fibre of 
humanity. Life is constant change, per- 
petual ascent and assumption of new 
forces and forms; but with its constant 
shedding of outworn systems there is one 
point, like the pole-star, that remains — 
Faith; that changes only in the beauty 
and amplitude of its splendor. The para- 
mount gift is a steadfast conviction that 
God is good, and all is well; the lesser 
faculties cluster about this fervid center 
with a subordinate worth. 

Do not wait for a smiling; sun to lend you ^°. ^?* 

^ -^ wait for a 

a sense of security and pleasure, for somesmiHng sun. 
ascendant influence to decide in your favor. 
169 



The Balanced Life 

Every fortune or trial waiting in your path 
depends for its capacity to harm or bless 
you on what is in your heart. The heart, 
with its sweet alchemy, transforms cir- 
cumstances into its own quality; that 
right, all is right. If the wide world is a 
dungeon, its darkness dense enough to 
be felt, if chains are heavy, there is one 
remedy — believe! If we must grope, let 
us feel for the light with all our powers, 
holding fast to our surety of its existence 
and its glory. It is not enough to confide 
in the God of high suns and the full vin- 
tage; we must trust also in the God of 
chaos and midnight, of the labyrinth and 
the desert. It is not enough to trust when 
the spirit leaps with gladness and the face 
of fortune smiles; we must trust also when 
the earth rocks and the heavens depart. 
In the hostile by-way He will meet us un- 
expectedly, saying, " I am with thee." 
Physical Xhe outward beauty must in its last 

and moral . •' 

beauty, analysis be a beauty of the soul; we re- 
luctantly dissociate physical from moral 
170 



The Central Melody 

loveliness. Graceful spirits must event- 
ually assume forms of pure outline, and 
do deeds fit to shine on the canvas of the 
Master. It is a principle never broken 
that man, or world, flower from the cen- 
ter outward, according to their quality. 
Beauty is first a spiritual essence, and 
all beauty must, when traced to its fount, 
find the heart of God; it lies deeply 
planted there, ascending more or less 
steadily to its typal glory. We are all 
rendered more outwardly fair by the cen- 
tral good, and all our actions are modified 
by this hidden dictate. The day will 
surely come when the hard and ugly fea- 
tures will no longer organize because of 
the supremacy of love. A single ray of 
love, widening in the soul, will ennoble 
every physical line and contour. The 
ideal we serve images itself in the com- 
monest face, banishing disfigurements and 
cares. ''With the ideal is immortal hil- 
arity, the rose of joy; round it all the 
Muses sing." 

171 



The Balanced Life 
Human Love wreathes a garland for the brow 

beauty the /^ 

aim of of the most unspiritual. The electric 

creation. .„ , , t i 

current will make metal so peculiarly 
luminous that its quality is revealed by 
its distinctive hue; so the light of the 
heart will make man bright with love's own 
beauty, not altered in form or identity; 
these are as they were, but the familiar 
presence has been touched with glory as 
the sun gilds the cloud. We are never 
more truly human than when in these 
sacred states, because never more like 
God, the divine and perfect Human. The 
aim of creation is an ineffable human 
beauty such as angels wear, a transcript 
of the beauty of the King. He wills that 
all should share His holiness, and so His 
grace. The return to the original type 
means that little by little the sense of ugli- 
ness and deformity will pass, and our eyes 
will no longer behold the disfigurements 
now so general. The ancestral dignity of 
human nature will exist again. Love will 
have her way, not only with our bodies, 
172 



The Central Melody 

but with the objects and events about 
us; a new universe will engirt the new 
race of men. A pure Hght enfolding all 
will give us honor even in outward pov- 
erty and misfortune. 

Beauty is also inseparable from }oy.f^^^^%^^^^ 
When we are capable of love and worthy f^om joy. 
to be loved there remains at the depths 
of us, even in great sorrow, a hallowed 
sweetness, a breath as of spring playing 
among the flowers and trees, transform- 
ing everything about us and saving us 
from the tyranny of mere occasion. 
Merged, as we are, in that which is higher 
we forget to take so serious account of 
our mere living. The outward wants 
of those who live in the spirit are few and 
simple, the common kindnesses filling 
them with pleasure and gratitude. The 
dewdrop is as beautiful as the diamond and 
the painted east excels any canvas of the 
master. Joy and appreciation are the 
vital air of the good, while grief is a sort 
of asthma. The true life is built and 
173 



The Balanced Life 

panoplied through rejoicing of spirit, and 
we can never be happy if we possess not 
and love not something that is pure and 
good. Happiness is a plant that thrives 
far more readily in a moral than an in- 
tellectual atmosphere; the spirit that is 
gentle, true, and kind is shielded by its 
faith. To look confidently upon life, to 
accept the laws of nature as laws of love, 
not with sighs of resignation, but with 
cheerfulness; to dare to search and ques- 
tion, and at the same time hold fast to 
faith and peace— these are the qualities 
that make for happiness. A religion 
that restrains joy is wrong and its fruits 
condemn it. 
Maintained Qur suDDort is the birth in us of that 

youth. . ^ \ 

which banishes fear — a confident love. 
Fear has its roots in selfishness; self- 
distrust and distrust of God consume us. 
Let us abandon ourselves to Him who 
knows whither the worlds drift. The con- 
fident heart can heal sorrows and doubts; 
love exalts talent, enhances beauty; it 
174 



The Central Melody 

overcomes. The secret of retained youth, 
in the face of years, is holding fast to en- 
thusiasm and love — in short, maintaining 
the harmony of Hfe. 



175 



Chapter VIII 

The Great Amens 

No heart is pure that is not passionate, no virtue safe 
that is not enthusiastic. — Ecce Homo. 

Stores of ^ I ARE sound and emancipated spirit 

promise. | . 

JL moves calmly even in portentous 
times, steadily pushing its faculties to their 
perfection. In the most complete men 
the better traits are rounded, ruddy, and 
well to the front. The one invincible 
force of the world is the human will, an 
engine behind all the instincts and capa- 
bilities; and if it have the breath of God 
it will impel them goodward, making them 
equally sweet and strong. In the soul that 
is balanced behef and action have always 
been united like the two properties of light. 
Nothing great has ever been achieved with- 
out these burning at the heart of the good 
and the true, God militant in man, om- 
176 



The Great Amens 

nipotent Will incarnate and riding on 
wings of Love. Men truly and grandly 
human have drawn abundantly on the 
stores of promise. The light-hearted, the 
convinced and inspired, have always ac- 
complished the great things. God said, 
^'Let there be light,'' and the word went 
flashing forth into stars clad with verdures 
and divine humanities. 

Life should be martial, gallant, and at ^^^^^ ^^^ 

^ sword. 

the same time tender and pure; the good 
soldier is one of the most exalted figures in 
the world; he has a heart in his bosom 
and a sword in his hand. In the breast of 
the brave and virtuous a strain of maternity 
mingles with the might, victory organized 
and merciful; while he wields the sabre 
there flashes from its blade gleams of 
aff'ection — his sword is ^^ bathed in heaven.'' 
In his ardent struggle with evil he quenches 
fear in mercy and feels not the pain of 
wounds in the glow of service. The spirit 
in which we look to the future is the test 
of our moral condition; if we do not sow 

12 177 



The Balanced Life 

light, our real life is asleep, has not yet 
awaked. The secret of good achievement 
is the undaunted conviction that behind our 
gifts is the capacity and resolution to push 
them to their best. The gauge of our 
manhood is v^hether all that is best in us 
is ralHed for service. 
Abandon- There are some w^hose presence in the 

ment to ^ ^ ^ ^ 

the good, world is as the presence of luminaries; 
their entrance to a room is as though the 
candles had been suddenly lighted. Even 
in their silences they demand our hearts, 
and they succeed in making humanity 
beautiful to us. In our wretchedness 
they are morning light, and whenever we 
think of them we think also of immortality. 
They point the glass of their faith into our 
darkness, and lo! suns and stars appear. 
^'Sick or well I have had a splendid time 
of it, grudge nothing, regret very little,'* 
were the almost dying words of one 
who waged a life-long battle with physical 
death. The way of life is abandonment to 
the good, submergence in the great Will, 
178 



The Great Amens 

cutting away once and forever the ties of 
self-interest and self-sustentation. It is 
easy to move with the tide bearing ever and 
ever upward if we will but trust ourselves 
to its currents. Life is intuitively com- 
mitted to the Power that upholds all things; 
for we are but nurslings upon the breast 
of Nature. Events are benign and every 
blade is wreathed in flowers. 

Love and truth are then our vital breath. The day 
These great words get into the minds and final. 
hearts and so into the lives of all supreme 
characters. Matthew Arnold expressed 
them as ^^ sweetness and light/' and Mr. 
Roosevelt has named them '^'sweetness 
and strength.'' The ill-favored concep- 
tion of human depravity has been con- 
tradicted at every point of man's progress 
and the old teaching has had its fatal 
blows. The All-True and All-Good has 
graved himself in the very integument of 
body and spirit. The foregoing remark 
would be only a beautiful iteration, need- 
less of repetition here, if it were not true 
179 



The Balanced Life 

that some still deny our heavenly origin, 
that the true and the good stand for- 
ever, are the only realities, finding their 
apotheosis in man. Commonly speaking, 
there are virtue and evil, darkness and 
day; technically there are not. The day is 
great and final, it is everything; night is a 
myth, the globe has simply turned, imposing 
its bulk between us and the sun; that orb 
is, as ever, transcendent with glory. It is 
as true of the universe as of heaven that 
there is ''no night there"; the temple of 
creation is never in shadow. 
Best We should hold to the fundamental 

moments . . 

our measure, mtegrity oi the race, to the great amens or 
the good spirits in all ages; they are the 
genial beams of the collective Soul of the 
world. We should insist that our highest 
self is our real self; embosomed in beauty, 
equipped with mastery, we should insist 
upon realizing that self, giving it freedom, 
occupation, joy. What is always most at- 
tractive in us is that interior beauty by 
which our friends get glimpses of the im- 
i8o 



The Great Amens 

perishable. We are entitled to be meas- 
ured by our best moments, for this is when 
we awake as from dreams, reveal our angel, 
part the folds of our life and vouchsafe 
the vision. What flashes of charm from 
characters set down in world-vocabulary 
as depraved! The gem in the gutter is 
still a gem though obscured with filth; 
wash it and it responds as gloriously as ever 
to the light. 

It is thus we should think of our fallen The heart 

deep with 

friends. They will have their deliriums of divinity. 
folly, moments of insanity, but they will 
return to health. Sin is an intruding 
sickness and no proper quality of man. 
The faintest aspiration for good is a 
symptom of return to rationality, as when 
the recuperating patient asks for food. 
The sweetest music is not orchestral but 
the human voice when it speaks from its 
instant life in tones of purity and affection. 
Wherever we touch Hfe we find that which 
holds ineffable charm, and life is every- 
where if we drive our shafts deep enough — 
i8i 



The Balanced Life 

even beneath the sands of the desert. So 
the heart of humanity, outwardly arid, 
scorched with selfishness, is deep with 
divinity. In its mystic abysses are stored 
seas of love and courage. 
Breath of the When we have been true we have, at 

high day. 

least for the moment, lived, and we marvel 
that we could ever have been otherwise. 
The exhilaration is the surge of the divine 
through all open channels of our life. We 
can only comprehend in others that which 
is also within us, making possible our quick 
recognition of the good and the brave 
wherever we find it. Truth rejoices the 
general heart; and love, like music, has 
transfiguring virtue. Nothing is so in- 
telligible as goodness, nothing so puzzling 
as sin; it is as inexplicable as madness, 
and when we recover from its delirium 
we can not comprehend our former con- 
dition. We marvel at crime and tabulate 
it among the varieties of lunacy. The 
problem of evil is as unaccountable as 
that of plagues; but love and righteousness 
182 



The Great Amens 

are as the breath of the high day on the 
mountains. 

V The rise of Hfe in verdure, beasts, and 
men, is the response of the earth to the call 
of the Lord.' Nature is bHthe, redolent, 
advancing; clad in perpetual maidenhood, 
she is a daughter of the morning. ''Room 
for the living!" she cries, as with rosy 
fingers she unbars the gates of light. She 
covers her scars with verdure, screening 
decay with beauty, and deftly obliterating 
all traces of her act. By her abounding 
vitality she deprecates sin and death. 

Evil is nonexistent and there is nothing Fire life with 
absolute about it; it is so much nothing- ^^ ^^* 
ness and vacuity. Why, then, should we 
fear it or reckon with it .^ Let us fire life 
with appropriate courage! Since the sun 
smiles and the earth blossoms, and the 
birds build their nests, and the mother 
plays with her young, let us keep heart, 
remain men, and trustfully commit our 
destinies to Him who speeds the stars. Let 
us accentuate life and all that it com- 
183 



The Balanced Life 

prehends, uplift men by inspiring them 
with confidence, and the battle is already 
fought. Reliance contains a life-power 
that is only now beginning to be under- 
stood; it is a compound of courage and 
vision. With its feet planted in the present 
it is also dowered with the future. While 
it treads the path of duty it shines with the 
imperishable. Let us offer reverence to 
trust — to the blade of grass piercing the 
sod, the farmer sowing his field, the spent 
life patiently repairing its losses and heal- 
ing its wounds. Say to those weary with 
battle that the issue will be favorable, that 
love cannot fail nor peace die. Raise 
your eyes to the heights, recall the things 
that give you spirit, forsake the suffocating 
enclosure of self-deprecation. 
What AH that will last is that in you which is 
advancing and determined. Plant a tree, 
scatter grain, wipe away tears, heal 
wounds, lift up the voice in song. '^Love 
the day and do not leave the sky out of your 
landscape.'^ Woe is he who would close 
184 



The Great Amens 

one blue rift of man's heaven! Do not 
coerce, dogmatise, proselyte, nor argue. 
To dominate another's mind is an im- 
moral act, it is worse than putting chains 
on the flesh. Make light, show the way, 
yield the delectation which the highest love 
always posesses. '^Give us to awake with 
smiles, to labor smiling, — as the sun 
lightens the world, so let our loving kind- 
ness make bright this house for our habita- 
tion." Let us sometimes live for an hour, 
though we must lay all other things aside, 
— to make another happy. It is time to 
become little children again, to stand with 
open eyes, in wonder and trust, before the 
mysteries of the world. 

If we accustom ourselves to view men The common 

dT . 1 day full of 

events m a divme atmosphere we angels 

shall see them most fully and truly. 
/ There is nothing more marvelous than 
what is called the commonplace. It dif- 
fers only from the miraculous in that it is 
continuously miraculous. ^ Every object is 
infinite in its possibilities; one event is as 
i8S 



The Balanced Life 

remarkable as another, as valid a signature 
of divine care. It is the infrequent that 
v^e deem extraordinary, and for its simple 
infrequency. Within the Perfect Whole 
all things are equally precious and impor- 
tant. The slenderest link severed lets fall 
the whole burden; the common day is 
crowded with angels, its skies full of 
beatitudes. 
Soul posture. There is very much in the attitude, in 
the constant anticipation of the good which 
is as sure to come as seedtime and harvest. 
/ Expect to find the divine in common things 
and straightway every bush will flame with 
God. The soul posture is the main thing, 
the spirit with which we look out on life; 
then, let come what will, we remain in good 
heart and mind. If He is not love this 
moment. He never was, nor ever will be; 
if His peace is not filling us now, it 
is surely our fault. To escape God we 
must retreat to life's cellars and closets 
where His Hght cannot penetrate. Acquire 
knowledge, accept affection, stifle not the 
i86 



The Great Amens 

child heart within you, keep the vision 
clear. 

If we are not openly receptive and com- Companion 
panionable to all the good, evil will flow 
immediately in, as to a vacuum; where 
light is not, darkness must dwell. MaHgn 
influences are quick to preempt all un- 
occupied territory; and whatever is arid 
becomes a place of fatal influence. If the 
soul does not grow plants, weeds will rise 
in rank luxuriance from germs latent in the 
soil. Let us without equivocation call evil 
evil, remembering, however, that at the 
sources we are divine and beautiful. The 
freeman may choose to make himself out- 
wardly a slave, but he is ever a freeman 
of the blood; the prince may repudiate his 
titles, but that does not nullify his inherit- 
ance. Man is man though in ruin, a son 
of God though he strive to be a beast. 
The beauty of the Lord God is upon 
him and the life of love glows deep 
within him like the spark at the heart of 
the seed, which even in its outward wreck 
187 



The Balanced Life 

and decay springs up into newness of 
being. 
Salute the j^^^ ^g sound the bcauty of the good 
and its perpetual day. When the night is 
long and dark, look to the morning; when 
winter binds the earth in its winding-sheet, 
remember that the sun has just turned in its 
orbit and is bounding toward the spring. 
With our ear to the south we may hear 
the robin's first hymn under our window. 
Salute the ideal which is the coming 
actual! Live in that which shall be, and 
you will transform that which is; we be- 
come that ideal which we persistently 
entertain. We proclaim the perishable 
because our minds seize upon vanity, mis- 
taking for the real that which is veneer and 
foam. When we reaHze the value of the 
deeper soul we shall strike the sacred 
spark from the very stones of the high- 
way. 
Gentleness, There should be an insurrection of the 

cheerfulness, . , . -n r • ii i n^i 

confidence, i^ind agamst all untriendly powers! Ihe 
deeper soul can never compromise with 



The Great Amens 

anybody or anything; it must hold to the 
right as the needle to the north/ Fear is 
wholly evil, grounded, as it must be, in the 
conception of a universe delivered over to 
anarchy and chance. In the face of 
present dangers and future perils the bird 
feeds its young, chants its loves from a 
wavering bough in the chill rain with a 
pathetic dumb trust in the Power that rules. 
Dismay and apprehension gather terrors 
kindred to themselves, augmenting their 
own unhappy state. 

Even if we are indisposed to hope, ^^ , 

, ^ . . ^ resolute. 

let us resolutely entertam it, settmg our 
faces to the day, and in the fulness of 
time we shall see what we look for. 
Says Denner in "Felix Holt'': ''Well, 
Madame, put a good face on it, and don't 
seem to be on the lookout for crows, 
else you will set other people watching." 
Gentleness, cheerfulness, confidence, — 
these precede all morality, are the initial 
and indispensable virtues. * If your creed 
is dreary, be sure it is not of God; His 
189 



The Balanced Life 

light enlighteneth the world. Denial has 
no place in Hfe, especially human life — 
its most persistent form. 
Dare Ljf^ partakes of infinity, has an upward 

everything. ^ ^ ^ ^ -^ ^ ^^ 

and inverse direction to that which is not 
life. On the plane of the spirit rules are 
often exactly the opposite from those of 
matter. Expense of love is economy — the 
more squandered, the more remains. In 
the life of the heart prodigality is thrift. 
Trust, and trust enlarges; hope, and hope 
widens to the perfect day. Opportunities 
of spirit are thick and importunate. It 
takes a great deal of time to eat, sleep, 
travel, make money; no time at all to 
salute those ideals that press to our doors 
like sunlight. Unfurl the sails to the 
winds; every flung banner of the spirit in- 
creases courage, every new ideal is a torch 
lighted at the altar of Heaven. The good 
thought braces us for action until, claim- 
ing it for our life, we are competent to face 
and conquer anything that may oppose us. 
We may even waylay Destiny, bidding her 
190 



The Great Amens 

stand and deliver. If we meet our task 
with gaiety and pluck, we shall fairly turn 
the tables on calamity. A man is not 
properly founded until he has dared every- 
thing. By forcing the body to certain ex- 
pressions we may influence the heart to 
follow suit, and so, by cooperation of flesh 
and soul, induce spiritual conditions which 
would otherwise lie dormant. The spirit 
is moved by a sincere attitude of body. 
Self-compulsion is admissible, never the 
compulsion of others. By sincere and un- 
flinching buoyancy we may become what 
at first was in the deep will only. Let us 
have no hollow simulation, but a full 
draught from the founts of gladness stored 
by the Creator in every human life. 

The will to be happy is a frank recog- ^^^ ^^^^ ^° 
nition of our heirship, and our outer world 
will eventually respond to so brave a 
regime. Every fair motion of the soul, 
every testimony even tacitly borne to high 
conviction, contains a renovating power 
over the entire body. It holds an in- 
191 



The Balanced Life 

destructible attribute, and its waves of 
transmutation widen until they break on the 
shores of the celestial. The first advance 
yields the strength of the new nature, and 
that, added to the old strength, furnishes a 
larger power for a larger advance, and so 
life accumulates in compound ratio. By 
the mere recognition of capacity we are 
borne out of the region of death and 
change and for the first time actually 
exist. 
What This is what a conviction and knowledge 

will do. of our equipment will do for us. In these 
new zones of thought and life we do not 
age, but inversely return to the sweetness 
and strength of manhood. High thought 
will smooth out all the wrinkles of body and 
spirit, interpenetrating us with airs of im- 
mortality. He who concedes his worth is 
in much better condition morally than he 
who deprecates himself, for the obvious 
reason that he dwells in truth, and the 
high intuition of state gives him health and 
reason. When he has grasped the logic of 
192 



The Great Amens 

human dignity and destiny he is baptized 
again at the fountain of love and joy. 

There are resources within us upon which Unmounted 

*■ heights. 

we have not yet drawn, and are as yet largely 
unknown to us. There are many corridors 
and apartments of the soul unexplored and 
to which we are strangers, heights of life 
to which we have not yet mounted. In 
truth, we only near the borderland of that 
country of ourselves wider than the oceans 
and profounder than the spaces. That we 
wear the attributes of the Infinite is proof 
enough of the truth of what has just been 
said.' Let us, then, sedulously and with 
joy tend the temple fires of life, watching 
for the flame in the bosoms of those about 
us. We should let no opportunity for 
happiness escape us, nurturing within the 
purest germs of love. Happiness is in- 
evitably linked with love and duty. 

If we have never felt the might of our The soil from 

, IT r ' which Hght 

covert goodness, nor caught gimts or its will spring. 
secret loveliness, our life has slept till now; 
for the highest spirits have expressed in 
13 193 



The Balanced Life 

deed only what all possess abundantly in 
heart, latent it may be, but there. The 
soil from which light will spring at the call 
of love is that of our common humanity. 
The difference between one landscape and 
another is comparatively slight, but there 
is a great difference in the beholders. The 
eye of Jesus saw in every wayfarer a child 
of the Omnipotent, and love finds royalty in 
the most ordinary breast. The dull and 
dreamy boy, left far in the wake of his 
class, may pass them all on another 
morrow. He has something in him that 
will shake itself from lethargy and run 
swiftly. There is a cheap and impertinent 
optimism that will not look unpalatable 
facts in the face; yet these facts, once 
frankly met, turn out angels in disguise. 
The truth, though garbed for the moment 
in shadow, outruns the most gifted fancy 
or the swiftest faith. 
tf^iellitl What then will Hft us out of the abyss is a 
moment of downright sincerity, a full ray of 
reality. ^ We are timid and economical of a 
194 



The Great Aniens 

dowry that is inexhaustible, fearful lest we 
drain heaven, and trembhng to accept the 
full invitation of the Spirit.^ So it happens 
that our slumbering goodness rarely opes 
its eyes, its timorous feet pressing reluc- 
tantly the border-Hne of achievement. 
There is nothing abnormal in miracle, life 
is miracle, every moment of it, and the 
whole of it — eating, sleeping, breathing, 
are as inscrutable as the heavenly host. 

It is curious to inquire what would hap- Launch forth 
pen in the world if the powers of the mind 
could take instant material shape. The 
mind immensely outruns any possibility 
of erecting its conception in outward 
structure and design. But if what genius 
beheld might that moment take form, as 
perhaps some day it will, what would 
happen is beyond the pen of this hour to 
depict. We should traverse interstellar 
spaces, upbuild architectures by new feats 
of fancy, and deck the earth with glory and 
beauty. We should heal the sick, correct 
the deformed, and exile sorrow. In the 
195 



The Balanced Life 

dawning day of its power will not the mind 
of God in men do these things ? Is not the 
ascendancy of thought near at hand, even 
at the doors ? Let us launch forth and sail 
over the rim of yonder sea, and when 
another sea halts us sail over that, and on 
forever into the illimitable idea of life. 
No one can definitely measure the sway of 
a soul that strives to live in an atmosphere 
of beauty and is actively beautiful in itself. 
It is the quality of activity that makes life 
demoniac or divine. 
The morning We should Hve as though we were ever at 

of certitude. . ^ i i • i 

the mornmg or great and sacred certitude, 
for thither we inevitably tend. What we 
are impels us; the soul must not recoil on 
its own fresh forces! We should go forth 
feeling that we are master of all but the 
Almighty; as though all things were our 
servants, and this warranted assumption 
will carry us into the actuality. The 
largeness of the cup means much, for 
the waters are adequate. No day should 
be permitted to pass without drawing some 
196 



The Great Amens 

new circle about the old one, and so con- 
tinuously widening existence. Let us lift 
our voices in the name of the beautiful, for 
we hasten its coming if we but pronounce 
its name, utter its music, display its fea- 
tures. The boldness of the hope men 
harbor today eclipses all former flights, 
and not an hour passes but the collective 
heart adds to its beauty and breadth. A 
tide of joy and power is breaking over 
humanity, vision is lengthening, we are 
awaking from the figment of materialism 
and can not say definitely what sweet 
surprises are at our gates. We believe, 
however, that they will arrive speedily, 
surpassing our bravest auguries. 



197 



Chapter IX 

Oil in Our Lamps 

One comes to value his plus health when he sees what 
difficulties vanish before it. — R. L. Stevenson. 

Health, ^HP^HE arcanum of health, power, and 

power, I • • 1 • 1 r 

and joy. -A- pj IS the Consummate mterplay oi 
each part with every other part. When we 
are so exquisitely adjusted that we are not 
conscious of distinct faculties, conscious 
only of a happy and whole life, we have 
come near to the divine intent. Any remin- 
der from definite departments of ourselves, 
a pain or even a local ecstasy, indicates a 
break in the perfect balance. ^ The bird's 
song is a unit with its body, it sings to the 
feathers and feet, knows only that it exists, 
and that existence is gladness. And so it 
happens that the cricket chirping under the 
leaf is happier than many a man.' When 
we are divinely well every atom of us is 
198 



Oil in Our Lamps 

poised to a clear design; every tissue and 
nerve lives for a definite end which is the 
end of all. Health in the sense of an 
absolute blending of the varied personality, 
so that it makes one music, is today 
practically unknown. The distinct con- 
sciousness of the parts of the body or soul 
indicates some loss of balance and is a 
merciful provision; it is as if the loom 
stopped when a thread broke. Goethe 
says that everything we undertake to pro- 
duce, whether by action, word, or whatever 
way, ought to spring from a union of all the 
faculties. It takes the balanced man to 
produce thus, — and such work alone is of 
the highest significance. Only when the 
concert is so true that not one power lags 
or weakens are we thoroughly equipped 
for the priceless art of living. 

Doctor Mazzoni, the attending phy- Resistance to 
sician of the late Leo XIII, said of 
his distinguished patient: ''It has always 
been said of Pope Leo that he has 
shown powers of extraordinary resist- 
199 



The Balanced Life 

ance to diseases of the constitution, which 
is true; but he also, which is httle known, 
enjoys the harmony of all his organs 
and of his physical, moral, and intellec- 
tual qualities, which is the real cause of 
his great resistance to diseases." These 
are the traits of a royal figure, of a 
nature Olympian, profound, complete, 
and wherever they are seen they compel 
gratitude and admiration. 
normaf Some One has said that in the finality 
ecstasy will be found to be normal; which 
must be true, for the purest harmony is but 
perfect health, and surely perfect health 
should be the regular condition of all God's 
creatures. When severe pain is suddenly 
stilled into the common state of being, the 
sensation may be described as ecstasy, 
though it is normal life; and a taste of the 
real quality of the life that God intends us 
always to enjoy, contrasted with what we 
feel in our degenerate condition, would be 
like the sweetest music of the body. Not 
that rapt and anomalous use of the 
200 



Oil in Our Lamps 

word which borders upon ''deHrium/' but 
just ineffable peace of health. He who 
strung the human lyre keyed its chords to 
His own music. The strident thing we 
call man is not as God sent him forth from 
the laboratory, symmetrical and sweet as 
the first morning of the world. 

In weariness and discouragement music Echoes of 
calls back the pure tones of the deeper life. 
This is why it is the universal language, 
appealing with inexpressible authority 
to every race and soul. It would be 
impossible to have a heaven for other 
than well people, for heaven must be the 
place of absolute soundness; and with 
health of body and soul any place is 
heavenly. To such, nature whispers her 
fair secrets. Said Mencius, ''Nourish 
your vigor correctly, do it no injury, and it 
will fill up the vacancy between earth and 
heaven." So wonderful is man in him- 
self, so capable- of power and gladness, 
that if he once knew his capacity mere out- 
ward emolument and the sport of the 

20I 



The Balanced Life 

senses would become insignificant; he 
would live in a rapture so deep and con- 
genial that it would not concern him if 
the material universe dissolved like snow. 
There is no peace without order, no joy but 
that of an individuality tuned to its entire 
surroundings, including the invisible. Are 
we in order .r* Alas, no! When in a rare 
moment we approach it, we seem to take 
flight into Paradise. We have heard now 
and then a melody too perfect for any- 
thing but silence, when the soul lay close 
to eternity and God. How few full, fruit- 
ful, gentle Hves there are! All too few! 
The new note Xhe note of the new day is hygienic. 

hygienic. -^ -^ ^ 

More and more frequently we meet happy, 
hopeful natures, eager for sound bodies 
and pleasant thoughts. There is a ren- 
aissance of human nature; the housed 
race is getting out under the sky and oxy- 
genating the system. We are realizing that 
if we are ill, incompetent, and distressed, 
it is because our life-forces are suppressed; 
some golden key is mute, some chord 
202 



Oil in Our Lamps 

broken, congestion or depletion in some 
part of the being. The heart is looking 
homeward with wistful gaze. Living should 
be identical with growth in every part, with 
daily progress in all that makes us more 
the souls we were meant to be. We should 
tell ourselves once and for all that it is our 
single vocation to become complete, inde- 
pendent, as great and happy as lies within 
us, a state immeasurable and sweet. To 
complain of destiny is only confessing that 
we have failed to realize our proffered life. 

Our joy is the test of our progress, J^y 
for it is the precise measure of the hospi- 
tality we have offered to the beautiful 
things of the Spirit. If we are not happy, 
it must be that we have not sum- 
moned the precious qualities of the life 
to the front. When we are well we pant 
for development, for the adult life of the 
spirit free and strong. In youth we feel 
incomplete, a tangle of possibility, an un- 
discovered country; in manhood we are 
the adventurer, still with much bewilder- 
203 



The Balanced Life 

ment but wider horizons and bigger hopes, 
an illimitable way before us stretching to 
the mountains; in age we know we are but 
an embryo angel in the womb of time, 
about to awake. All life is the education 
of the soul, and the world is the school. 
Growing and A Synthetic life is effective because it is 
gathered and fired to a purpose, has ir- 
resistible momentum; it is varied and 
beautiful as nature, but, like the great 
round globe, holds steadily to an orbit and 
goal. It grows and conquers, has infinite 
resistance. A cylinder of glass can with- 
stand the shock of the whole sea if it is 
filled with the same element; where there 
is omnipotence in the stroke there is om- 
nipotence in the recoil. If we are God's 
we have His power within us to act and to 
withstand. ''I am the Light of the world, 
ye are the light of the world." ^^ Greater 
things than these shall ye do.'' Panoplied 
in spirit, the very senses impregnated with 
God, we are no more liable to disease or 
failure than sunbeams. A soul quick 
204 



Oil in Our Lamps 

with Life carries a power that is omnipo- 
tent, for it has Omnipotence behind it; 
it changes the very cHmate around it, the 
winds are tempered, the orbs glow with a 
more kindly light because it lives. On 
a clear morning one exults in light and air, 
as tonics to the frame, while another dwell- 
ing amid the same beauty seems to inhale 
miasms or the damp of caves. The grand 
creation is to us what our quality is, and we 
dissolve the world and society in our being, 
assimilating them to our state. 

Mirabeau says, ''Why should we feel Power of a 

•^ . , , beautiful 

ourselves to be men unless it is to sue- soul. 
ceed in everything and everywhere.^" 
There are but few who can withstand 
the dominion of the soul that has suf- 
fered itself to become beautiful. It is as 
impossible to subordinate soul-power as 
hunger or the love of women. To ex- 
tinguish it is to put out individuality itself. 
Love and Beauty! are they not of the heart 
of the Infinite, undying, adorable .^^ The 
warm, pure atmosphere yields its inspira- 
205 



The Balanced Life 

tions gratuitously; if we would we can not 
lift the will against the dehcious inflow. 
Genuine power is not only strong, it is so 
gracefully, deHcately as roses in May; it 
transforms without constraint. It rolls 
back sorrow with the brave gentleness of 
the dawn. It even makes the beauty of 
beauty; for the faultless outline without 
soul is naught. What makes man manly 
and woman womanly is indefinable, in- 
urned, a possession and an influence. 
Says George Eliot, ^^It is pleasant to see 
some people turn around — pleasant as a 
sudden rush of warm air in winter, or the 
flash of firelight in the chill dusk.'^ 
Grace a Qrace is wrought up in our nature 

matter of . 

growth, through processes of growth, like the hue 
and incense of the pink. There can be no 
imposed grace cast about us as a mantle; 
it must be an essential of the life, and of 
every part of life, learned not at school, nor 
won by any mental gymnastic. The nor- 
mal man has in him the radiance of his 
youth carried onward to age; as the light 
206 



Oil in Our Lamps 

of long-past mornings is stored in the ripe 
apricot, so the sunshine and grass of the 
old farm live in him, blessing the hour 
that now is. Peace is not the resultant 
of winged events or happy circumstance; 
it is so vital a part of us that it can hardly 
be called a possession, but us in the same 
real way that quality is a part of the peach. 
One laughs at the storm, is regaled by its 
fury, while another trembles; the gale ac- 
commodating itself to the spirit's ascend- 
ency, another Elijah and another Horeb. 
Our gladness or gloom arises from us as an 
incense of what we have been from birth 
to this hour. We make body and breath 
as the hickory makes its wood through the 
years of its growth. The cells of the 
human edifice are built one by one as we 
live, and are like the comb of the bee, 
surcharged with our quality. 

Therefore the alchemy within us taking The 

, - . . I unbidden 

place moment by moment, is vital as an vision. 
unalterable and undying possession. To 
be sure, the spirit is more mutable than 

207 



The Balanced Life 

the wood of the tree, but not less staunch. 
There is a class who live from within, 
owners of what they reveal; others there 
are who live from without, displaying 
borrowed gifts, their interiors overlaid with 
artifice, their virtues the mantle of another. 
Dowered with the infinite, we stand in no 
need of fortune or friends, having all re- 
sources within the soul. Fling open the 
life to the glory and gladness of the day! 
The vision comes unbidden to the pure and 
prophetic soul housed in a clean and chaste 
body. Fed from within it casts a candid 
lustre over life. 
Power of Power is insured where every detail is 
purpose, p^j^^ J and directed to its purpose, where 
strength is not wasted by want of cen- 
trality. Unity gives tendency and victory 
in advance; it has a straight aggressive 
quality that nothing can withstand. The 
test is right here — if we do not make life 
straightforward and victorious, we had bet- 
ter not have been born. Success finds 
force in the conviction that we are here for 
208 



Oil in Our Lamps 

a purpose and have the abiHty to attain it. 
It must be so! *As God has planted the 
oak at the heart of the acorn he has laid 
deep within man the substance of the 
angel.- Incipient love and powder in the 
architecture of man are grounded in an 
environment that w^ill mould and influence 
the v^hole nature to the same great end, 
yielding gladness, uplifting the life, il- 
luminating the thought. 

Only he v^ho is whole and balanced can jir^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ 
impart it, and then, by a pervading, unseen 
influence, as an aureole, felt, near at hand, 
but invisible, a blessed contagion seizing 
upon all who come within its circle. 
Health and courage propagate themselves 
everywhere, restoring to the same condi- 
tion without wasting their store. Life re- 
kindles life; the flaming wick can ignite a 
thousand dark torches. What others claim 
from us is not our darkness but our light, 
not our hunger and thirst but our bread 
and gourd. One hopeful face will kindle 
others, one strong heart will set others beat- 
14 209 



The Balanced Life 

ing with firmer and lighter stroke; the 
glow of one orator will stir the souls of 
hundreds as one. Our friends surely have 
a right to demand that our conversation 
and deeds be based in the heart; with the 
identical right they have to ask that we play 
not the hypocrite or sycophant. Let us 
have oil in our lamps ! A deed of kindness, 
a word of promise or of truth, should be 
the incense of an inner holiness and glad- 
ness, should carry the atmosphere of peace- 
ful years on the sunniest heights of the 
soul. 
Ending There are lives which begin in sad- 
•'^^' ness and end in joy. The tree starts in 
the deep, dark soil, perhaps with a rock 
upon its head, earnestly working its way 
upward to the light and air and downward 
to the heart of the world. Suddenly it 
sees a rift of radiance above, and with a 
song sends its shaft skyward. Some Hves 
fight with time, doubts, and physical hind- 
rances until the forties, when they become, 
as it were, based, and start on a joyous 

2IO 



Oil in Our Lamps 

period of ascent. A plant can do little 
until it has got firmly rooted. Built 
from within outward, and claiming the full 
resources of the Spirit, grounded below 
and with clear vision, the upward w^y is at 
last easy. Cherish the sources of Hfe! 
See that you fling not away the oil of your 
lamp, lest haply in after time you stand 
before a closed door at midnight. Let 
your contribution be a light whose un- 
conscious shining enlighteneth the world! 

We should look well to the flesh. Look well to 
''Heart and Will are great things, but, after 
all, we carry a barrowful of clay about with 
us, and we must carry it a Httle carefully if 
we mean to keep to the path and not run 
zigzag into the border of the garden." We 
can not work in the air, nor use the lever 
of the spirit without an earthly fulcrum. 
The body gives the soul purchase and 
support, is as necessary as the oil and wick 
to the flame. There have been those who 
have performed miracles of labor with a 
body like wax and tissue, and an all- 

211 



The Balanced Life 

conquering, regal will that has spurred 
the body far beyond its normal powers. 
For such life is brief, burning rapidly and 
brightly. Geniuses have wrought without 
appropriate tools, have struck angels from 
the rocks with common picks, have painted 
prodigies with their fingers. Michelangelo 
went into his own garden and dug from the 
soil pigment that today immortalizes the 
Vatican walls. There are spirits held even 
to old age in common, fragile clay whose 
white Hght causes them to glow like crystal. 
Childhood leaps and dances in them and 
they seem even physically to skip upon 
the hills of life. Their infirm mansions 
are steadfastly held by the spirit. Ruins 
they are, which rise into masterful archi- 
tecture when the inhabitant awakes. 
Wings or ^^j^^ J.^lg jg howcvcr, that for perform- 

weignts. ^ ^ 

ance of great mark we need extraordinary 
health, that the body will act as wings or 
weights according to its condition. ' If 
Beethoven could play divinely on an old 
harpsichord, what could he have done with 

212 



Oil in Our Lamps 

the modern piano or grand organ ? If 
some work miracles with weakly bodies, 
what could they accomplish with sound 
health ? ^ It makes a great deal of difference 
whether we have red blood in our arteries. 
Some whirl with the whirling world, 
others stand by as cold and silent spec- 
tators. There is no virtue in inertia and 
cold, it can only communicate its own 
misery, but health is native and vigorous, 
joined as it is to the springs of sustaining 
power. It floods all its banks, filling the 
estuaries of other lives; it scouts dif- 
ficulties and reforms shattered hopes, as 
Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley turned 
cowards into men. We are more and more 
coming to value the soul that is established 
in robust and pure flesh. If man is to do 
his best, he must have the basic condition, a 
body which is a safe anchorage to brain 
and heart. 

A depraved spirit depraves the flesh and,^^?^^^^^,^^ 

^ ^ . ^ body and 

ultimately breaks its fibre. On the other spirit, 
hand, a miserable body has a dispiriting 
213 



The Balanced Life 

effect, like that of a strident and broken in- 
strument on the ear of the musician. It is 
said that when Mozart was an infant a 
discord struck on the piano would throw 
him into spasms. Body and soul react 
upon each other and play into each other's 
hands; at last they stand or fall together; 
they lift or pull each other to common 
ground. In the finality there has to be 
equihbrium, a settled and permanent 
equation. This rule holds at last in all 
the universe, and some kind of balance is 
ultimately reached. Man is so various a 
unit that any minute jar makes the whole 
structure tremble. A smallest star swerv- 
ing infinitesimally from its path disorders 
the whole universe; a malign thought will 
infect the very blood and skin of the body, 
and distort the curves of the features. We 
recall how in our childhood days some 
blank discontented face on the back- 
ground of our life marred our summer 
mornings, and we have since wondered 
why it was that when the blue arch of the 
214 



Oil in Our Lamps 

sky stooped to kiss the world, and the fields 
were gay with songs and flowers, that there 
was somebody who found it hard to smile, 
why a sombre spirit behind a certain face 
drove storm-clouds across its heaven-born 
surface. 

Oh, to be a great heart! a rampart, as the ^^ ^ great 
Greeks expressed it, that cannot be shaken, 
a strong place of refuge and peace! Econ- 
omy is wastefulness in the domain of love, 
staunching the milk of kindness and leaving 
the udders dry. The rule is spend — 
spend! Let the heart of the race flow like 
the rivers for a single day and a revolution 
of love would become operative. We 
sometimes forget that love is of God, 
immeasurable, omnipotent; that the pro- 
fundities are linked to the commonest soul; 
as if we v/ere to attach our lawn hose to 
the rivers of the round world. Those who 
are willing to give love place and power in 
themselves become striking figures in 
society, and ''though they sleep, purify the 
air." There will dawn ere long on our 
215 



The Balanced Life 

codes of life a nobler morning when the 
soul will have healing in its wings. At 
present we are like dumb brutes, all un- 
conscious of ourselves. It is said that 
Jesus awoke to His Divinity on a wonderful 
day in the dark wilderness of Jeshimon 
and, emerging, passed into Galilee like 
the Conqueror from Edom, ^^ swinging to 
and fro in the greatness of His strength. '* 
Some of us have not yet learned that the 
heart altering alters all, that the world is a 
place of echo returning thought and life. 
The good heart has new visions, discover- 
ing angel-faces in hitherto vacant sepul- 
chres. What common scene can be com- 
monplace to the eye filled with serene light 
clarifying all things with its own purity ? 
^^^y Courage is the bloom of vision puttinp; a 

conquer c> r b 

who believe, new face on man and the universe. A 
glimpse of the mountains causes the heart 
to leap to its feet and sing. They conquer 
who believe! Great epochs of belief have 
been sparing of words and prodigal of acts; 
words were not rich enough to express 
216 



Oil in Our Lamps 

their faith, and it went forth in deeds of 
love and joy; the Hfe spoke in an irresisti- 
ble, inaudible tongue. The lofty and 
clear idea gives gladness for gloom, vigor 
for v^eakness, a happy, enlightening accept- 
ance of destiny for hostile submission. 
If v^e could comprehend the glory and 
purpose of our lives we should never 
sorrow nor sin again; we should be lifted 
to a zone so pure that nothing low 
or despairing could live in it. We 
journey through brief shadow into the 
everlasting, momentary glimpses of which 
we get as light through the embrasures of 
divine souls about us, seen by many faintly 
and as from afar. 

Yet heaven is within even us ! Let us Heaven 

- r 1 t 1 • ^thin us. 

assume it! summon it forth! that it 
may cheer our way! A low and hope- 
less spirit puts out the eyes and weakens 
courage. Skepticism is so deadly that it 
has the effect of a virus, neutralizing 
being and ending in moral suicide. An 
unbelieving heart will breed plagues in the 
217 



The Balanced Life 

very bone and marrow of the body. A 
philosophy of pessimism drags the soul 
from its moorings, leaving it the sport of 
tempests, but the blood tingles in the tonic 
atmosphere of trust. There is always life 
for the living; what man has done man can 
do, and greater things than these. What 
he can dream of, he can do; for "eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that 
love Him; but God hath revealed them 
unto us by His Spirit." 



218 



chapter X 

Vision and Patience 



The long look of the soul into the beyond is not possible 
at all times, or with all men. — Amiel. 

The only way to gain the sunlit heights is by patiently 
climbing shoulder after shoulder of the mountainside. — 
Jefferies. 



W 



HEN we learn that incongruity and Tangles 
mistake are but the raw, unfinished threads. 



product receiving treatment, that even 
the tangles are proper threads pulled 
through the meshes of the life's fabric, 
conglomerate, undressed, not yet domesti- 
cated in the cloth of beauty, we shall have 
patience and peace. We shall have dis- 
covered love and reason in our hitherto 
jumbled career, a clear plan beneath the 
mass slowly assuming symmetry and at- 
tractiveness. Creation is not yet finished, 
it has yet to take on grace and foliage. ^ 
The blare of mixed tones, so unlike music, 
219 



The Balanced Life 

is a very rational preparation for life's 
symphony; the varied instruments must 
find a common key. Rare strains oc- 
casionally transcend the general melee, 
infrequent chords of glory thrill the soul, 
but the music is to come, and we await it 
with expectant joy; we know well what the 
strange preliminary indicates and heralds, 
that it is right and necessary, and are un- 
disturbed by what would otherwise be 
unbearable. The present at its worst is 
good, and a part of the great Order. Every 
bubble on the tide, every whirlpool, eddy, 
and abyss, is a legitimate feature of the 
flood sweeping triumphantly to the ocean. 
Victory Countless experiences, dark and fair, will 
be gathered into the ultimate we have 
named heaven. We believe in the Spirit 
beyond measure, in the final defeat of evil 
and the victory of love; in brief, we be- 
lieve in heaven and cannot help it — as the 
thirsty and hungry believe in water and 
bread. Every atom of us calls for that 
which will reasonably fulfil the existence 
220 



Vision and Patience 

God has given us, yielding refreshment 
and content. We beheve also in earth; we 
enthusiastically and profoundly believe in 
ourselves. ''Not tomorrow," we cry, ''but 
this moment give me sunshine, let me live a 
full-orbed soul today. Now is eternity, 
now I am in the midst of immortality, this 
moment the supernal enspheres me.'' 

And our appeal will be heard! EachJ^e^J^aJJ 
year of the child's life is as brimming with 
childHke joys as that year can hold; but 
the hastening years will contain larger 
capacity, sweeter flavor, more sacred and 
complex rapture. The seasons of eternity 
will be crowded with their own timely ex- 
periences and transports, the spirit will 
traverse boundaries that will be but thresh- 
olds of still nobler advances. Life will 
appear finished all the way, — as the palm 
in its vigorous maturity, perfect in form 
and strength, is still growing in every 
twig. Perfect for the hour, we shall 
be forever taking uniform steps toward 
a more and more complete harmony. We 

221 



The Balanced Life 

can not think of ourselves as finished in the 
sense of a pause, — as an overture ceases 
v^hen the manuals of the great organ are 
pushed in and there is silence. 
Peace of This affirmation fully grasped brings 

affirmation. . . - . , - 

Vision and patience, because an under- 
standing of life as it is and ever w^ill be. 
The mystery remains clear as a star in the 
sky, or creation view^ed from an orb v^ith- 
out scrutiny of detail; clear as a continent 
to the explorer, though he may not have 
crept through all its jungles or paddled 
up all its tributary streams; clear as a 
flower sentineled on the rim of a glacier, 
and as pure and fragrant. A rose is 
fathomless in its mystery, but how unper- 
plexing! Mystery is a legitimate ingredient 
of reality. How existent is the mother to 
the child, how potential to its little mind 
and heart! what a veritable and enchanting 
fact the orbed and veined breast whence it 
lives and the warm arms that hold its tiny 
form! and yet what a fathomless mystery is 
a mother to her child and how little it com- 

222 



Vision and Patience 

prehends of her wonderful being! It can 
not grasp the most elemental facts of her 
body, much less those of her mind and 
spirit. Mystery is an inseparable consort 
of reality. While no one can define life, 
nor bridge the gulf that severs materiality 
from thought, how sweetly real life is, how 
dear and domestic to him who has sane 
and sacred relations with it, who rests in its 
care and draws aliment from its breasts! 
There are innumerable secrets crowding 
the common day in which we live without 
fear or distrust. This idea is now inter- 
esting reflecting minds, and while respect 
for science has not diminished, respect for 
man, for the invisible and incomprehen- 
sible reality, has increased. 

The exile of doubt and dawn of gladness Exile of 
belong with the new vision. We know 
life now as never before, we are almost 
domesticated in the universe, whereas but a 
brief yesterday ago we were strangers to the 
next continent. We now analyze the uni- 
verse as though it were a flower, or a dew- 
223 



The Balanced Life 

drop, and think of it with the same sim- 
pHcity and unity — as a larger bloom on the 
stem of Hfe. Its mystery we fathom with 
our faith, and physically we can bound, 
weigh, and resolve it into chemical parts, 
y The wide encompassment is no longer 
chaotic, we no longer clothe it with super- 
stition, and what the mind fails to grasp the 
heart trusts. The divine plan once clear 
we, and all things, are disposed in their 
places and the problems are solved. 
Where Happiness is discovered in the final truth 

happiness is ^ ^ ^ 

found, as to the aim and government of the uni- 
verse; we cannot be happy so long as we do 
not know what God is doing with us. We 
meet people all joy from this wedlock of 
truth and trust; life has become to them 
at once clear and fathomless. It seems 
paradoxical, but there is a condition where 
the reason is satisfied and the heart's 
demand for mystery granted; where we 
have caught the totality of nature, learned 
her ways, breathed her spirit and heard her 
melodious heart beating beneath the scores. 
224 



Vision and Patience 

Every soul looking ardently into life must ^^^^^^^^^ 
sooner or later see God; the clear gaze is 
not possible always, nor to all, but he who 
can give it will be satisfied. We are in- 
curably divine, apprehensive of new and 
sweet surprises, aglow with everlasting 
hope and fundamentally prophetic be- 
cause we have God's mind and think His 
thoughts after Him. The love of perfec- 
tion is the guarantee of its coming, for He 
who gave the love did so that He might have 
the pleasure of conferring it; it is God 
putting questions to our hearts. We be- 
lieve in goodness and we know the good 
must prevail; deep within our oft despair- 
ing and vacillating exterior is a child 
hidden, a frank, sweet, trusting thing that 
holds desperately to the ideal — to love, 
holiness, and God. A whole millennium 
of idyls sleeps in our hearts and we can not 
turn skeptic if we would; we aspire with 
the plant that instinctively turns to the 
light and we rise by irrepressible intuitions. 
/ If music exalts, it is because music is har- 
15 225 



The Balanced Life 

mony and harmony is our dream. In 
bitterness, selfishness, and misery we pant 
for peace, for adoration and love without 
end; not so much for the infinite in it, as 
for the beautiful and the good. 
Hail the ^^^ ^^ j^^jj ^^iq brief moments of better 

better vision. 

vision, the noontide times of faith, as a 
foregleam of that which is to become the 
customary condition. Peace is not a mere 
dream, for peace must one day have univer- 
sal sway; it will be the upland where we 
shall permanently encamp. The believer 
not only knows heaven possible, but sees it 
already germinating in men and women 
glorified, raised above evil and incongruity 
by the power of divine principles. Leib- 
nitz says that heaven will be the moral 
order of the total universe and will include 
all men, not Christians alone, who have 
realized their inheritance. It will be crea- 
tion's blossom and balm, society sublimated 
and redeemed. The hallowed order will 
everywhere ultimately prevail and victory 
bear the banners of the Lord. It is not 
226 



Vision and Patience 

necessary for us to become geniuses to at- 
tain heaven, but simply to sound our true 
note in the universal concert of the love of 
God, to represent the divine thought at least 
as faithfully as a flower or a solar system; in 
brief, to be what we ought to be, a simple 
expression of love,^ wisdom, and beauty. 
Says Madame de Stael: ^^The only type 
which pleases me is perfection — man, in 
short, the ideal man. I can only admire 
the fine specimens of the race, the great 
men, the geniuses, the lofty characters and 
noble souls." The feeling of this brilliant 
woman is common to us all, it is the pro- 
phetic spirit claiming its own. 

Heaven must be composed of the Chosen souls. 
chosen souls which we hope will eventu- 
ally include all souls; we cannot help 
believing in the predestination of 
conformity of man to the likeness of 
God. Could He who sees the end from 
the beginning launch beings on a stream 
that would eventually carry them to 
destruction .^ - Has He made misfits in his 
227 



The Balanced Life 

worlds ? If the annihilation of a cricket 
or a pebble would mar the architecture 
of Love, what of the loss of a man, even 
the most obscure and insignificant ? The 
chink of mortar in the sub-cellar or the pin 
in the rafter is as pertinent to the edifice 
as the cornerstone or the facade; without 
you in your place the divine fabric falls. 
Ultimate ^^^ ultimate society must be a democ- 

society. ^ -^ 

racy of unified and perfected souls; as in 
music where all concur to one end, and each 
has the joy of contributing to that by which 
he himself is ravished and uplifted to the 
courts of Love. "Then it is easy to con- 
clude that the totality of all spirits must 
compose the City of God, that is to say, the 
City of God, this truly universal monarchy, 
is a moral world in the natural world, and 
is the most exalted and most divine among 
the works of God.'' It is the sovereignty 
of a grace that is always mistress of itself. 
Peace is found only in reconciliation with 
destiny, — that is to say, when we feel our- 
selves directly in the presence of God. 
228 



Vision and Patience 
That we are on the road, and not yet^^I^y^t 

arrived. 

arrived, is indicated by almost universal 
lack of balance. So long as we are con- 
scious of a body, or any part of a body, we 
are not in absolute form, the rhythm is 
untrue. We ought to feel only a delicious 
unity, the sense of existence as a w^hole, 
without the intrusion of particular organs 
and attributes. Can we not recall the 
unsullied ecstasy of childhood when we 
knew we lived, that living was bliss, and 
all else oblivion ^ So long as we are self- 
analytical and introspective, solicitous of 
pain or responsibility, we are off the poise. 
When we touch our surroundings with such 
delicacy that we do not realize the con- 
tact, we are in the true relation, the in- 
finitely soft, oblivious relation of the brain 
with the skull, or, finer still, of flesh with 
spirit. 'The material body should not rub 
or gall the soul; the soul should sit loosely 
in the saddle and with the ease of perfect 
occupation. 

When we meet society and the world i^^press 

•' of peace. 

229 



The Balanced Life 

with the impress of peace, self is as 
truly there, but adjusted to the situation, 
and is as the clear-toned choir in which no 
single voice is evident and where the par- 
ticipant can not hear himself unless he 
utters a false note. Real music blends so 
exquisitely that it is as a single golden bell 
struck at midnight. The music of the 
spheres or the many-cadenced song of the 
high summer day has the sweetness of a 
single comprehensive note. When we are 
right we are a unit, an aggregate sphere of 
influence, a pure existence. '^ When a man 
lives with God his voice shall be as sweet 
as the murmur of the brook and the rustle 
of the corn''; there will be an added depth 
and richness that will instantly manifest 
itself. 
Struggle Struggle and haste are destructive 

and haste, r nri j • ^ r 

. ot peace. 1 he verdure arises not from 
self-eff^ort, but from the calm pressure of 
its under life. The sea into which the rivers 
are pouring finds its level buoyantly and 
gracefully because it cannot help it, like the 
230 



Vision and Patience 

rising sun that is really falling into the out- 
stretched arms of the auras. Harassed by 
fears, driven by duty, disquieted by subtle 
influences of sin and sickness, how rare is 
repose, and how difficult to realize that it 
should be the common condition of life! 
The permanent felicity which we call eter- 
nal life is only the life of man in the divine 
health of every part, and is not only access- 
ible to all, but equally natural to all. We lie 
open to the beauty of heaven and inhale it 
as our native air. Let us aim to become 
all that we may be, to fulfil the highest 
human promise! It is our privilege to 
offer to our life all that can be offered to the 
life of man. Let us accept every lawful ex- 
perience, for we had better leave behind 
work unfinished, fortune and position un- 
made, than life itself incomplete, so far as 
earth can make it. 

Life transcends all circumvention and ^^^ attitude. 

takes surprising, beautiful steps. Every 

leaf is inimitable, and when God meets us 

it is in unexpected places. ''I stand amid 

231 



The Balanced Life 

the eternal ways and what is mine shall 
know my face"; the grasses wait for 
nature's shears and brush. ^We shall meet 
Him in highway or closet if we are pre- 
pared; go where we will, we shall find just 
so much beauty as we carry within us, and 
shall find that even in hell. There is a 
heart chemistry by which all things are 
changed into our quality and we are de- 
fended by a sphere of character, as the air 
of the globe fuses and dissipates meteoric 
artillery fired from the interstellar spaces. 
Our Our vindication is in our attitude toward 

vindication.,./^ ^r^, , , i • i /-^ i i 

lite. 1 he palace band m the (warden seek- 
ing Jesus were smitten to earth by the grace 
of His countenance, and the eflFulgence at 
the sepulchre prostrated the guards, who 
arose and fled from the place; on the other 
hand. He drew to Him with the magnetism 
of love harlots and wretches who were 
changed by His glory. ' The soul's mo- 
tions are instantaneous and entire; the 
good deed immediately ennobling the doer,' 
so that the metamorphosis is visible to 
232 



Vision and Patience 

others, the very tissues of the flesh being 
involved. 

Submission to God, to the divine Po- Submission 

. ^^ God. 

tentiaHty, is not defeat but the victory 
of loyalty to the code of being, the 
realization of the better self, the consum- 
mation offered to every life, and with- 
out which none can truly live. Success in 
life is to give the hallowed principles of 
being play and work. Said Hafiz, ''To 
the unsound no heavenly knowledge en- 
ters." It is only by self-consummation 
that we build the man. It is coming to 
the world to see that the gift of God to the 
soul is not a vaulting and exclusive sanc- 
tity, but simple goodness, the dear essential 
of the heart, the fraternal loves that com- 
pose the staple of everyday living. Re- 
ception of the life that belongs to us, and 
the manner of that reception, unravels the 
riddle of creation. Says Leibnitz: ''In 
that City not only does no good action fail 
to bring its due fulfilment, — but every one 
is happy in proportion to his fulness of life. 
233 



The Balanced Life 

And even before the day when his fulness 
of Hfe arrives the love of God enables him 
to enjoy a foretaste of his coming happi- 
ness." Is not all joy largely anticipation, 
a leaping forv^ard of the heart, sequestra- 
tion of bliss by the gift of faith ? Heaven 
is the condition of rounded, perfected 
pov^ers, for "without holiness [wholeness] 
no man shall see the Lord." 
No full We must accept the graduated ascent 
common to all things that live. There are 
no full stops, but an utterance in series 
rising higher and ever higher. Attainment 
is limitless, but slow-paced and finely 
shaded as the morning light approaching 
noontide. Every hope, however bright, is 
upon the brink of its promise, for hope 
never spreads her wings but on unfathom- 
able seas. Forever it will be said, ''It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
As we live on w^e discover life's complexity, 
its deeps beneath deeps, the substance of 
the growing soul. With increasing ca- 
pacity it strikes grander chords, until 
234 



Vision and Patience 

present experiences, as compared with 
former, have no aptness of contrast. Our 
Lord is the typical instance: first the 
peasant lad playing in the streets of 
Nazareth, subject to his parents, the ex- 
quisite joy of a pure spirit in the presence 
of nature; at last reaching a capacity such 
that even the cross striking full on His 
soul evoked only deeper harmony w^hich a 
fev^ days later shone in the beauty and 
pov^er of His epiphanies. '' The child grew 
and waxed strong in spirit and the grace of 
God was upon Him.'' 

Like the Master, every spirit builds itself building our 
a house, and beyond its house a world, 
and beyond its world a heaven. As we 
conform our lives to the purest ideals, those 
ideals widen and subHmate, amplifying the 
soul, concurrent breadth and sweetness at- 
tending the influx of the Spirit. As the 
outer perishes the inner is renewed, and we 
behold not merely the continued existence 
of the self, the bare fact of immortality, 
but life illimitable, accomphshed as on a 
235 



The Balanced Life 

grand stairway, and one step at a time, — 
the dream of Jacob eternalized in the spir- 
itual order. Everything climbs, and these 
angels were the final flowering of the work 
of God bridging the gulf; even God in the 
flesh took this inevitable way. The fossil 
strata shov/ us nature beginning with ru- 
dimental forms and rising to finer diver- 
gencies as the earth grew ready for their 
reception. 
Life's ^g forget this now, when life is taking 

gathering ... . . 

momentum, mightier Strides under the influence of its 
gathering momentum and seems to strike 
continually the noontide hour; but it is 
as true as it ever was that it takes time 
for a tree to grow. If this stubborn fact 
seems to some the remnant of an old bar- 
barism, it is because life is at this moment 
putting forth a cluster of flowers. There is 
actually no change, and heaven is reached 
by the good old route that our fathers 
traversed in weariness and hope. To- 
day we cannot get a red cedar sooner than 
the earth and air will grow one, and we are 
236 



Vision and Patience 

told that some of them in the Mariposa 
groves were in their prime when the Wise 
Men of the East were seeking the cradle of 
the Saviour. The soil and the skies take 
the fine old paths they have trodden from 
the beginning. 

Work and live, work and live, and all at Work and 
once the advancing soul seems to have forged 
for itself a new condition, which will in due 
time yield to another, and so forever. It 
must be that there are tutelary angels w^ho 
pale in the presence of elder and more 
glorious beings who have long ascended in 
the way. Are there not beckoning spirits 
on every promontory of life ^ The ancient 
method of mountain climbing by putting 
the soil beneath the feet still holds. 
''The battle goes on, — ill or well is a 
trifle, — so that it goes." To sanctify 
human nature by bringing it gradually 
under the control of the angel within us is 
the entire problem. Our work consists in 
facing, subduing, evangelizing, and angeliz- 
ing the life that now is, restoring it to its 
237 



The Balanced Life 

former beauty. This must come or ex- 
istence cease, for a suppression of growth 
involves that of life. Ultimately we cannot 
be other than ourselves nor realize another 
nature than our own; if a clover then a 
clover, if a pine then a pine, — but always 
itself; He who cradled the lily in the 
seed will see that its individual beauty 
obtains. I do not know that we can hinder 
our development if we would, for the Di- 
vine ways are so marvelous in counter- 
effects. Peace frequently comes through 
cataclysm, and the kind storm drives the 
ship to harbor; the redemptive plan is past 
solution. If it is the will of God that the 
good shall prevail, who can obstruct it ? 
Difficulty As the plant fights its way through the 

and peace. ., ^ , . , : . , 

sou or early spnng and stands serene amid 
the glory of summer days; as the tree 
struggles down and up until it is so firmly 
anchored in the earth and air that the 
tornado blast only regales it, — so human 
diflSculty will come at last to peace 
and abounding strength. The prophetic 
238 



Vision and Patience 

glimpses of today will become the routine 
of tomorrow. To the youth Hfe is not 
always the optional, thrice-happy thing we 
older people fancy; we forget our own past. 
It is often raw, uncertain, beset with de- 
feats and doubts, like the sweet spring 
bursting its pods amid pangs of renewal. 
It takes time for the liquor of Hfe to clear 
and gather relish. 

This is why a career of spiritual The second 
advance blossoms into such rare beauty 
towards the end; passing all the turn- 
stiles of strife, it finds the place of tran- 
quil growth. After a host of obstacles 
have been overcome, and the gifts of 
achievement and vision have awaked, the 
later years should be free and joyous. 
After long use the hand and soul work 
together fraternally and almost uncon- 
sciously; the novitiate condition should 
pass into the ease of facihty. Ebb of 
physical vigor, and ripening spirit should 
give us a more settled faith in the kindness 
of the universe and the wisdom of our 
239 



The Balanced Life 

veiled God. The innocence and bliss of 
youth should be carried over into age unit- 
ing the simplicity and freshness of the first 
period with the wisdom of the last, — the 
second Eden of the soul. A momentary 
shadow seems to fall athwart the heart of 
the poet when he sings, 

*' Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower." 

It is quickly dissipated, however, by re- 
turning faith in the youth of the immortal 
life. The genuine life continually in- 
creases in depth, freshness, and hue, and is 
better farther on, as college is better than 
the witless innocence of the primary 
school; if we are the ever- widening 
channels through which heaven flows, it 
must be so. Not the joy of the stormless 
morning, but the deep, golden glow of 
advanced day and the triumph of the 
spirit. It is then that we come so near to 
God that the angels possess us, and our 
peace is like the resting ocean which 
240 



Vision and Patience 

mirrors the sky and is master of its own 
profundities. We are at last in Sweden- 
borg's beautiful countries of the Age of 
Gold where the air permits not a falsehood 
to leave the lips. 



i6 241 



chapter XI 
Thoughts That Find Us Young 

Thought of Him always finds us young, touches the 
eternal sources that transcend years, — touches the ageless 
note in us. — Amiel. 

We are happy when we have connection with the 
Divine. How one thought warms, invigorates, and an- 
other deadens and depresses.- — Maeterlinck. 

Of course, when we think, happiness can be nothing 
else than drinking of the fount of life, health, joy, wisdom, 
love. How shall we do it? — Phillips Brooks. 

The simple T IFE everywhere bep-ets kindred Hfe; 

problem. I r -r i • 111 1 

JL^ therefore, if the rose is well, the sky 
pure, and the cedar sound, why not men of 
the same divine ancestry ? We should be 
wholesome and happy as these if we were 
not polluting the stream. The Infinite, 
flowing unimpeded into all things, com- 
municates Himself as light communicates 
color to the flower and bow. To live from 
242 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

God is to live from life, beauty, exuberance, 
and in normal ecstasy. The discordant and 
joyless condition indicates absence of it, in- 
ducing spiritual chill and vertigo. Beauty 
and strength are as inseparable from pure 
living as the day and the sun. Here is the 
simple problem stripped of metaphysics 
and theological formula — to become the 
clear channel of God's life is all there is of 
it. We are as fundamentally open to Deity 
as the spread disc of the water-lily to the in- 
fluences of the sky, and all w^ide-flung souls 
exhibit the grace and vigor of Nature 
herself. Life proceeds from within out- 
ward, building its mansion with noiseless, 
invisible mechanism, weaving its tissue like 
the leaves in spring; but we are attempting 
to cast beauty and joy about us as the leper 
covers his spots with costly vesture. 
"^See that you are pure within, and the ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ 

•^ ^ ^ are pure 

detail of Hfe will become an appropriate within. 
accompaniment, as the song is an articula- 
tion of the soul. Where there is health and 
gladness is also the spirit of the Lord. 

243 



The Balanced Life 

There is but one life distinctly human, and 
if we do not have it, we can not be said to 
live at all. Only in admitting life and ut- 
tering it in the attributes of health and glad- 
ness are we truly human creatures, other- 
wise we repudiate our nature. God in man 
is humanity; inhumanity is reversion from 
the original type and from nature. This 
is why prayer, truth, and love stir native 
chords of the spirit, they are the impress of 
human life, the communication of that 
which must ever belong to happiness; 
why goodness is so sufficient and dear to all 
who possess it, and why ^^ heaven'^ ex- 
presses more exactly than any other word 
the whole hope of men. 
Truly The truly religious life is a truly human 
truly human. Hfe; It is not wisdom, love, beauty, 
power; but all of these at once and each 
entirely. The world is not painted, nor 
adorned, but is from the beginning ex- 
temporaneous; and God has not made 
some things beautiful, for everything He 
touches shares His grace. Unless there 
244 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

is resistance, all the works of His hand 
wear the bloom of His heart. If we have 
discovered any symmetry and charm in 
ourselves, we have to that extent discovered 
God, and thus far Hve from Him. 
/ In the past men have relegated the Lord instigator 
to bodies of divinity and temples made beauty, 
with hands, exihng Him from the field 
and fireside, from the life we have named 
secular; but now we are realizing that 
He is not only the inspiration of relig- 
ious feeling, but also of music, art, mathe- 
matics, and industrialism, the instigator of 
all beauty and use, and in seeking these 
we are seeking God as honestly as in 
prayer. The poet, artist, and musician 
have not been canonized with the saints 
of the church, but, nevertheless, they 
have sought Him in the sublimest man- 
ner. They have not been true inventors 
or creators, for beauty was in the heart 
of God before humanity was born; they 
have been seekers after beauty, listeners . 
to a melody descended from above, be- 
245 



The Balanced Life 

holders of the divine in wind, star, flower, 
and human form. 
Unremitting As we can find breath only in the air, or 

entrance of . . -^ 

the spirit, quench thirst with water, so can we live 
only from God — which is a matter of the 
purest science, more exact than geometry. 
Another method of life-getting would be 
as futile as attempting to breathe in a 
vacuum or raise roses by the influence 
of incandescent illumination. After the 
subtlest analysis of mental processes we 
have to admit that our highest thoughts and 
noblest impulses are all given us. Only 
by unremitting entrance of the Spirit 
can we be renewed and sustained; in-, 
tercept the current, and life vanishes like 
sunbeams on the wall when a cloud in- 
tervenes. Only by instant and unbroken 
invasion of the Power which pushes the 
forests skyward can we win symmetry and 
usefulness. Prayer is our vital breath, and 
the very universe is impregnated with 
worship; every object of nature is intensely 
moral because the work of God. Every 
246 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

bird, flower, and orb exhibits dumbly the 
traits of adoring love; it is Life passing 
into them and finding its own expression. 
We do not possess Life, we inurn it, and 
the vessel takes the similitude of that which 
it holds. 

Why do some thoughts always find us The dawn of 

di 1 r • new forces. 

^ keep us so — such, tor mstance, 

as the universal and eternal beauty ? 

Because they are echoes and glints of our 

deeper selves, things that transcend the 

years and speak from the ageless and 

perennial. Like the earth, we lie open to 

the sky, but some of us can not yet meet the 

gaze of the unclouded day; and when at 

last we can, all things will be cast behind us 

in our insatiable thirst for the vision. The 

age is this moment shaking itself loose 

from the phantom of materialism with 

the freshness and power of the spring-tide, 

and we may look for wonderful happenings. 

Divine revelation is taking the form of 

material invention, and the mind of God is 

finding, through men, physical avenues of 

247 



The Balanced Life 

expression. In the full time it will rise into 
the psychic and moral. A grand spiritual 
epoch is immediately upon us and we are 
at the dawn of new forces and times. A 
few prescient spirits are up to watch the 
brightening east, and soon the whole world 
will awake with gladness and faith. 
"Watchman, what of the night.? The 
watchman said, The morning cometh!" 
The private Heaven-bom, we can not breathe the 
atmosphere of the sensuous; the life that 
lives at all lives in Him, and so living be- 
comes an auditory nerve of the Eternal. 
He seems to whisper a private message 
in some ears which is actually as public as 
though it were shouted to the universe; 
/ the deniers are only saying that they are 
deaf./ He tells the listening heart that it is 
known, loved, and defended; His con- 
solations are as ecumenical as the bars of 
great melodies that escape the average 
intuition, or throbbing truths deep in the 
heart of the great texts, given to those for 
whom they are prepared. Our ears are 
248 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

increasingly watchful for the secrets of the 
Lord, and we can now see quite clearly 
where but a brief yesterday ago was mid- 
night and disorder. 'He speaks to all as 
His light shines into every seedplot of the 
world; but there must be ears to hear and 
eyes to see. ' The speech delivered to an 
audience of a thousand is as private or 
public as the number who are open to its 
affirmations. 'Even God can not speak to 
the uncomprehending, and the infant mind 
must have time to grow to the point of sight 
and understanding; so there will always be 
some things that some minds can not now 
grasp, and therefore a continuously open- 
ing revelation. ''Some said it thundered, 
others that an angel spoke." 

The man who is cominp; will have^J^^, . 

^ ^ ^ theologies 

healthy and joyous contact with his disappear- 
environment, and his religion will be the 
fullest present expression of his human 
life, his joy and comprehension keeping 
pace with his capacity. The iron the- 
ologies are disappearing, made volatile in 
249 



The Balanced Life 

the crucible of love, and the Hght of the 
new day is breaking. '^ Nothing is hap- 
pier," says Leibnitz, '^than God, and noth- 
ing more beautiful or worthy of happiness 
can be conceived." And if we are living 
from Him and loyally expressing our own 
nature, which is also His nature. His 
happiness is carried over into ours and 
becomes one with it. His joy is in us, 
as the sun sits within its own radiance. 
Happiness is inseparable from genuine 
existence, which involves existence in God; 
and so far as we are not living from Him, 
w^e are in a condition of death. We may 
steep ourselves in Him to the very rim and 
depths of consciousness or lie panting on 
the shores. He rests in us and occupies 
us as the light occupies the flower, and His 
life in us is as distinctly ours, and human, 
as the light in the flower is vegetal. True* 
life is entirely free from the swathings of 
cult or persuasion; the circumvention 
characteristic of institutional religions is as 
distinctly other than the bliss of life as the 
250 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

sky differs from a fresco. Divorce from 
nature has left the prescriptive rehgions 
stranded and powerless to interest or save. 

Physical pleasure is a legitimate ap- We ought 

hi 1 /-I I . to know 

to the pleasure or the soul, joy on material 

the way to its pure consummation; for?^^^^^^^- 
corporeal delights are a concomitant of 
health, the sacred exultation of the flesh. 
It is salvation of the basic life which is a 
third of the whole. Physical pleasures 
are gateways to loftier and more interior 
ones, and asceticism was a blow at one of 
the highest laws. We ought to know 
material happiness that w^e may pass 
naturally inward to those which follow in 
divine order. The feet must touch the 
earth before the head may be lifted heaven- 
ward, and the flesh was designed to thrill 
with sacred life. 

-^' Wholeness of the body is as valid as He rejoices 
that of the soul, and the Lord rejoices in flesh. 
the glowing flesh as in the sweetness of a 
plant or the stability of an oak. As Pons 
Capdueil has quaintly expressed it: 
.251 



The Balanced Life 

" Oft have I heard, and deem the witness true, 
Whom man delights in, God dehghts in too.'' 

Nobly planned as we are, with earth and 
heaven for background, to which we are 
exquisitely keyed, the perfect juxtaposition 
should be the expression of our religion. 
Not one angel in the high heaven but 
once lived in the world and felt the sting 
of its trials, the thrill of its delights. The 
possibilities of our entire nature should be 
realized, for of what use are they if not for 
happy ultimation ? Then our "speech 
shall be lyrical, sweet and universal as the 
wind, of the transcendent simplicity and 
energy of the highest law.^' There will be 
love which radiates, force which acts, and 
joy that overflows. 
Wresthng for To this end we are waging an uncon- 
scious battle with the All-Loving, wrest- 
ling for self-victory by the strong force of a 
nature that detects, beating forever in and 
about us, a new music. As the unfledged 
bird tries the air in which it is soon to find 
its durable home, we are faintly but surely 
252 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

getting the rhythmic and virile motion of 
the sustaining and guiding Power. v/Our 
sorrows are the beating of our wings upon 
the earth with the effort of adaptation to 
flight, for until we are fully with Him we 
must feel His weight against us. -^ When, 
with eager ears, we detect some strain of 
heaven, how poor our own voices sound! 

The friction of life comes from the want Discovering 

r ^ ' r 1 ^is wavs. 

oi adaptation, a sure symptom oi growth; 
it is the musician wrestling with his fingers, 
the sculptor with his tools. The winners 
in life have discovered His ways and are 
keeping pace with Him. We know now 
that by the might of our wills we can not 
turn laws, we must turn with them, they 
will aid or crush us as we elect. Civili- 
zation's present glory has come by fidelity 
to law, by avoiding conflict with immutable 
and good powers, by watching tendencies 
and stroking nature the proper way. 
Respect law, and it will run gladly on your 
errands; antagonize it, and it will be sure 
to crush you. Wisdom never tries to subvert 
253 



The Balanced Life 

facts or lift her own weight. Hoist your 

sails to the adverse winds and erect your 

pistons in the rushing current of the steam. 

Strife with ^he Secret of modern mechanical as- 

Him, strife 

with our- cendancy is the recognition of this truth. 
The strife with Him is a strife with our- 
selves — the effort of self-adaptation and 
balance. We no longer think to alter His 
mind, but to know it; no longer supplicate, 
but study His will. Petitionary prayer is 
now in rare use, and even then we realize 
that we are appeaHng to our better nature, 
contending with our formative powers, 
suffering the pangs of growth, the adjust- 
ment of ourselves to our situation. He 
changes not at all, we are continually re- 
forming and inuring the life. The un- 
skilled hand struggles with the tool, and 
when facility comes, the tool is precisely 
what it was before, but the hand is wonder- 
fully different. We conquer God and the 
universe by conquering ourselves, by the 
conformity of the eye, the hand, and the 
life to what Hes about us. Jacob by the 
254 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

Jabbok, desperately clinging to the mystic 
angel and refusing to let him go without the 
coveted blessing, was wrestling with him- 
self, and as a prince he had power with 
God and prevailed over himself and not 
over God, as is commonly supposed. 

We answer our own prayers by parallel- ^^^ ^^^^^^ 

^ / •/ ^ our own 

ing our lives with the divine laws, and so prayers. 
long as there is any disobedience the battle 
must go on. The orchestra strives to con- 
form each instrument to one pure note, and 
when at last that is accomplished the 
symphony opens. We contend with the 
mountain and the mountain remains, but 
the climber has put it triumphantly be- 
neath his feet by changing his own situa- 
tion; not a rib or yard of the mountain 
has capitulated. The struggle with self is 
usually silent, often tragic, and always 
moving. We can not hear the clash of the 
passions, or watch the whirl of the soul's 
wheels, rapid, muffled, like the rush of stars. 

Peace will come with absolute com- Peace with 

1- , , 1 . compliance. 

phance, not by desperately pressmg our 
255 



The Balanced Life 

eyelids down that we may not see what 
must and should be seen, engaging all our 
puny strength with the eternal forces; but 
by reahzing that the alignment of our- 
selves with God is the first necessity and by 
setting practically and heroically about 
it. It is really the pursuit of the soul by 
the Soul, the Master and the instrument 
striving to find one harmony. We can not 
alter destiny; we must bend to it. The 
ascent is assured, but trial is the method 
and we can not escape His love. 



"I fled Him down the nights and down the days; 
I fled Him down the arches of the years; 
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears 
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
Up vistaed hopes I sped. 
And shot, precipitated 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. 
But with unhurrying chase. 
And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 

They beat, — and a Voice beat 
More instant than the Feet, — 
*A11 things betray thee who betrayest Me."* 
256 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 
We are unconscious seekers after Him, What we love 

. . . we absorb. 

recovering His spirit and image by an 
imperceptible metamorphosis. 'What we 
love v^e absorb and become, — and we love 
the divine Beauty because it is inevitably 
ours and because He is so lovable as to be 
irresistible. Our whole being sets to Him, 
as the full-sailed ship to the open sea; the 
ajfiSnIty is absolute and compelling. From 
our earliest moments we are unwittingly 
in pursuit of Him and He of us. As 
Phidias struck away the encompassing 
stone that veiled the image, we are day by 
day putting out of ourselves that which is 
not properly us and which hides our own 
beauty and peace. Life is the slow 
resurrection of the better, buried self, 
as lilies rise from the dark bed of the pond 
and spread their bosoms to the sky. It is 
a matter of recent discovery that degenera- 
tion has no foundation in fact, though 
partial views of life would seem to confirm 
the theory. When development from an 
invisible and central point became the 
17 257 



The Balanced Life 

theory of the thinkers, new Hght came and 
we saw the universe opening from the heart 
of God Hke a great tree with one thread of 
life binding root and leaf. Then we knew 
that we might investigate in sections, but 
the creation was a grand whole, momen- 
tarily breaking into larger unity. We saw 
intelligible Love within and beneath all 
things, evolving them into correspondences 
and semblances of Himself. 
Right will i^g ^n secretly believe that our best 

come at last. -^ 

conceptions are the truest, that right will 
come at last from an inevitable tendency. 
There is a spirit in the whole creation 
that buoys it Godward as the griass-blades 
seek the sun. Storm-tossed atoms, we 
know that all is well, and sequestrate the 
tranquillity that lies at the heart of the 
universe. Our atheisms are compara- 
tively trivial, the ruffled surface of the 
soul in whose deeps is everlasting peace. 
And when death comes, it is as welcome 
as sleep; we know we shall awake re- 
newed and refreshed in the fair morning. 
258 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

The man within the man fears naught 
and trusts, is free from stain or injury. 
Low in the bosom of the lashed sea is an 
indescribable and lasting repose, and in 
the high auras the same serenity prevails. 
In God is rest and gladness, and in Him 
we live. 

Those yearnings for purity that drift hke J^^V^d^^""^^'" 
great white birds across the expanse of^^^f^^>' 
every soul, those callings for God as the 
lost child calls in the darkness for its 
mother, indicate surely what and whom we 
are. We have heard Him speak the 
language of humanity and have, felt beating 
in His heart the heart of all. A God not 
interpretable to us in terms of humanity we 
could not comprehend, and this is why the 
theological Deity has never appealed to 
the heart. If He had not visualized Him- 
self in man, and loved like man, we could 
not have received Him, because we could 
not comprehend Him. He came imaged in 
man because He was man from heart to 
finger-tips; for if man is in the image of 
259 



The Balanced Life 

God, surely God must be in the image of 
man. His revelation was an unveiling of 
human nature. A God not explicable in 
terms of humanity could not exist for us, 
and the theoretical and literary Deity has 
never been accepted as the Father of men. 
The implacable and iron gods of the 
philosophies have never made any heart- 
appeal to the race. He comes as nature 
breathes in spring into the midst of His 
children, loving firesides more than cathe- 
drals; He is the God of the hearth, but 
with the breadth of the infinite between 
Himself and us. His quality is the same 
as ours, with that quality multiplied by the 
measureless; we are the drop of the ocean, 
He the ocean with properties common to 
both. 
God's honor ^y^ ^^^^ Stand or fall with Him and are 

bound up ^ ^ 

with our intimately bound up with His immortality 

success. 

and honor. There are those who claim 
to believe in God but despair of man; 
this is because they do not comprehend 
that the nature of man is one with His. 

260 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

"Because I live ye shall live also." To 
disbelieve in man, in human life, is due 
to a dearth of intelligence and conscience; 
to feel that the earth is a lost colony, an 
enterprise fallen through, to doubt the 
triumph of justice, of brotherly love, of all 
the good under all forms of expression, is 
the fatal incredulity. The honor of His 
name is concerned in our affairs and He is 
not going to fail. He who planted the 
stars in the soil of night, breathing from 
chaos and blackness the present beauty, 
who has guided and nourished the adorable 
creation from the beginning to this hour, 
surely knows what He is doing and what 
He has the energy and wisdom to do. 
Considering He has so well brought all 
forward to this moment, persistently evolv- 
ing the better from the good, can we not 
repose in His love ? In spite of occasional 
misgivings, we know He is the responsible 
Caretaker, and that He must take pride 
in the success of His worlds. Matters can 
not therefore end otherwise than as He at 
261 



The Balanced Life 

first planned; we cannot derange them nor 
block His sure purposes. 

"So long Thy power has blest me, sure it still 
Will lead me on.'' 

/All things will reach ripeness and beauty 
on schedule time. 
th ^w^t h^ Only here and there one rises to the 
height of present privilege; when will 
humanity as a whole assume it ^ When 
will the pulse of all beat with the music 
of His ? We must await with firm ex- 
pectation the natural awakening of divine 
consciousness in society. It is not yet 
light, but signs of coming day make it 
inevitably sure; it will arrive like a dawn- 
ing thought intrinsic to the mind of the race 
and destined to become the thought of all. 
Thus all great principles have found 
fruition and victory. "A great storm had 
broken upon the sea and the good ship was 
riding hard at anchor. It raged with 
unabated violence, now threatening to tear 
her from her moorings, now to overwhelm 
and break her to pieces on the rocks. 
262 



Thoughts That Find Us Young 

After twenty-seven hours of imminent 
peril I made my way aft and saw the 
tremendous spectacle of the waves. On 
deck there was a solitary individual to give 
the alarm in the event of the ship's break- 
ing from her moorings, and he stood at the 
foremast, to which he had lashed himself 
to prevent hisfalHng upon the deck or being 
washed overboard. As I looked at him 
he appeared to smile. That smile of the 
watch on deck subdued my fears, and from 
that time I was perfectly at ease and 
entirely resigned to the ultimate result.'' 
The Watch is on deck and He is smiling! 
^^The sea is His also!" 

"Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper Voice across the storm." 

"O glad, exulting, culminating song! 
A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes, 
Marches of victory — man disenthral' d — the conqueror at 

last, 
Hymns to the universal God from universal man — all 

joy! 
A reborn race appears — a perfect world, all joy! 
Women and men in wisdom, innocence, and health — all 

joy! 

263 



The Balanced Life 

Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy! 

War, sorrow, suffering gone — the rank earth purged — 

nothing but joy left! 
The ocean fill'd with joy — the atmosphere all joy! 
Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy 

of life! 
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe! 
Joy! joy! all over joy!" — Walt Whitman. 



264 



MAY 12 1906 






